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WIT  AND  WISDOM 


REV.    SYDNEY    SMITH 


SELECTIONS  FROM  HIS  AVRITINGS 

AND    PASSAGES    OF    HIS 

LETTERS  AND  TABI;E-TALK 

WITH  A  BIOGRAPHICAL  MEMOIR   AND   NOTES 
By  evert  A.  DUYCKINCK 


NEW  YORK: 
W.  J.  WIDDLETON,  PUBLISHER. 

187  0. 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1856, 

By  J.  S.  REDFIELD, 

In  tlie  Clerk's  Oaice  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United  Stiites,  in  nnd  fur  tlie  Soutlii'iru 

District  of  New  York. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


The  chief  writings  of  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith  are  inclu- 
ded in  the  original  English  editions  in  eight  octavo  volumes. 
These  are  his  "  Two  Volumes  of  Sermons,"  1809  ;  the  col- 
lection of  his  "  Works"  (embracing  articles  from  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  the  Plymley  Letters,  and  other  papers), 
4  vols,  1839-40  ;  a  posthumous  volume,  "  Sermons  preached 
at  St.Paul's,"  &c.,  1846  ;  "  Elementary  Sketches  of  Moral 
Philosophy,  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution,"  published 
in  1850.  To  these  are  to  be  added  "  Letters  on  American 
Debts,"  1843  ;  "  A  Fragment  on  the  Irish  Roman  Catholic 
Church,"  1845  ;  "  Letters  on  Railway  Management,"  and 
other  topics,  to  the  Morning  Chronicle ;  Articles  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review  not  collected  in  his  "  Works  ;"  numerous 
Sketches  and  Essays  printed  in  the  "  Memoirs,"  by  his 
daughter.  Lady  Holland;  and  the  extensive  series  ot 
"Letters,"  edited  by  Mrs.  Austin.  These  have  mainly 
furnished   the   material  of  the   present  volume.      In   the 


6  ADVERTISEMENT. 

preparation  of  the  Table-Talk,  Memoir,  and  Notes,  many 
collateral  sources  have  been  dravra  upon. 

Several  of  Sydney  Smith's  Writings,  will  here  be  found 
given  entire ;  while  the  selection  generally  presents  the 
most  characteristic  passages  of  his  "  Wit  and  Wisdom" 
from  the  whole.  Numerous  Miscellanies  of  much  interest, 
are  included  which  are  not  to  be  met  with  in  any  previous 
American  collection  of  the  author's  works. 

Nkw  York,  Ma>i  20,  1856. 


CONTENTS. 


BIOGRAPHICAL   MEMOIR PAGE      9 

PASSAGES    FROM    THE    EDIXBCRGH    REVIEW        .       .  107 

SKETCHES  OF  MORAL    PHILOSOPHY 195 

PASSAGES    FROM    SERMONS 256 

^-'ESSAYS   AND    SKETCHES 278 

y-PASSAGES    FROM    PETER   PLYMLEY    LETTERS 297 

REFORM    SPEECHES 314 

LETTERS   TO   ARCHDEACON    SINGLETON 329 

LETTERS    ON    RAILAVAYS 344 

LETTERS    ON    AMERICAN    DEBTS 353 

A   FRAGMENT    ON    THE    IRISH   ROMAN    CATHOLIC    CHURCH       ....       363 
LETTER   ON    THE  CHARACTER    OF    SIR   JAMES    MACKINTOSH       ....    379 

RECOLLECTIONS    OP    FRANCIS    HORNER 387 

/PASSAGES    FROM    LETTERS  .       .  392 

TABLE    TALK  —  ANECDOTES 417 


BIOGRAPHICAL    MEMOIR. 

Stdnet  Smith*  was  bom  at  Woodford,  Essex,  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  London,  June  3,  1771,  of  a  respectable  family  in  the  mid- 
dle class  of  Enghsh  society.  His  parents,  as  will  commonly  be 
found  with  the  immediate  ancestors  of  those  who  have  risen  to 
eminence  in  the  world,  were  persons  of  marked  character.  Rob- 
ert Smith,  the  father,  was  a  man  of  curious  talents  and  impulses, 
with  a  passion  for  foreign  travel,  and  a  mania,  not  a  Uttle  destruc- 
tive to  his  finances,  for  building  and  altering  country-houses  in  vari- 
ous parts  of  England.  He  married  a  lady  of  beauty  and  accom- 
plishments. Miss  Olier,  of  Huguenot  birth,  her  father  having  been 
one  of  the  refugees  driven  to  England  in  the  great  expatriation 
consequent  on  the  bigoted  tyranny  of  Louis  XIV.  This  infusion 
of  French  blood  was  afterward  called  to  mind  to  account  for 
certain  pecuharities  of  disposition,  the  humours  and  the  mercurial 
vivacity,  associated  with  strength  of  purpose,  of  their  son,  the 
subject  of  the  present  memoir. 

*  The  union  of  the  honourable  name  of  Sydney  with  the  generic  patro- 
nymic Smith,  which  has  been  ilhxstrated  by  several  distinguished  personages, 
would  appear  to  have  been  adopted  in  this  extensive  family  from  the  mar- 
riage, in  the  seventeenth  century,  of  Sir  Thomas  Smythe,  created  Viscount 
Strangford,  with  a  niece  of  Sir  Philip  Sydney.  It  was  one  of  the  jests  and 
humour?  of  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith's  life,  to  confound  himself  and  be  con- 
founded with  his  contemporary,  the  British  admiral,  Sir  Sidney  Smith. 
George  Sydney  Smythe,  the  member  of  the  short-lived  Young  England  party 
who  published  a  volume  of  poems,  "  Historic  Fancies,"  is  another  instance 
of  the  association  of  these  names. 

]* 


10  FAMILY  HISTORY. 

Five  children  were  the  fruit  of  the  marriage,  four  sons  and  a 
daughter:  all  of  them,  we  are  told,  "remarkable  for  t^heir  tal- 
ents."* 

The  eldest  of  the  family,  one  year  the  senior  of  his  brother 
Sydney,  was  Robert,  known  amongst  his  contemporaries  in  the 
London  society  of  wits  and  statesmen,  from  a  familiar  handling  of 
his  Christian  name  at  school,  as  Bobus  Smith.  Educated  at  Eton, 
he  there,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  was  associated  with  the  future 
statesman  George  Canning,  and  the  fastidious,  fine  poet,  and  fin- 
ished classical  scholar  of  after  life,  John  Hookham  Frere,  in  the 
composition  of  the  Microcosm.  This  periodical,  of  the  prolific 
family  of  the  Spectator,  appeared  in  forty  weekly  numbers  be- 

*  Memoir  of  the  Eev.  Sydney  Smith,  by  his  daughter,  Lady  Holland, 
Am.  ed.  p.  13.  We  take  the  first  opportunity  to  notice  the  sentiment,  pro- 
priety, and  faithfulness  which  characterize  this  filial  work.  It  famishes  ample 
materials  for  a  knowledge  of  the  man,  particularly  in  his  domestic  and  social 
relations.  The  development  of  his  fortunes  and  position  in  the  world  is  of 
especial  biographical  value. 

Immediately  after  the  death  of  Sydney  Smith,  the  material  for  the  Memoir 
was  begun  to  be  collected  by  his  widow,  who  was  about  intrusting  the  work 
to  the  poet  Moore,  when  his  broken  health  defeated  the  plan.  Mrs.  Sydney 
then  requested  her  friend  Mrs.  Sarah  Austin,  the  accomplished  German  trans- 
lator, to  undertake  the  narrative  and  edit  the  Letters  which  had  been  brought 
together.  Ill  health  limited  Mrs.  Austin's  subsequent  performance  of  the 
work  to  the  Selection  from  the  Correspondence  which  constitutes  the  second 
volume  of  the  Memoirs. 

Much  as  the  genius  of  the  biographer  of  Sheridan  and  Byron  is  to  be  re- 
spected, and  with  every  consideration  of  the  feeling  Avith  which  he  would 
have  entered  on  the  "life," in  its  political,  social,  and  personal  aspects,  it  is  a 
matter  for  congratulation  that  the  Memoirs  have  fallen  into  female  hands.  Wo- 
man alone  could  have  interpreted  so  gracefully  and  truly  the  kindly  virtues  of 
the  man.  His  keen,  consistent,  brilliant  writings  need  no  particular  exhibi- 
tion of  his  political  and  public  life.  They  speak  for  themselves.  Mrs. 
Austin,  in  her  preface  finds  another  appropriate  reason  for  the  participation 
of  the  sex  in  the  work :  in  gratitude  for  what  Sydney  Smith  had  accom- 
plished, by  his  arguments,  for  female  education.  "  Within  our  times,"  she 
remarks,  "  no  man  has  done  so  much  to  obtain  for  women  toleration  for  the 
exercise  of  their  understandings,  and  for  the  culture  of  their  talents,  as 
Sydney  Smith."  Mrs.  Jameson,  in  her  "  Ethical  Fragments,"  makes  a  similar 
acknowledgment :  "  See  what  he  has  done  fo"!  humanity  fc  '  society,  for  lib- 
erty, for  truth  —  for  us  women !" 


BOBUS   SMITH.  11 

tvveen  November,  1786,  and  July  of  the  following  year.  Nine 
of  its  papers,  chiefly  grave  studies  of  history  or  serious  reflections, 
ai'e  set  down  to  Robert  Smith.  He  was,  also,  joint  author  with 
Canning,  of  one  of  the  essays.  Leaving  Eton,  he  became  a 
student  of  King's  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  distinguished 
himself  by  the  excellence  of  his  Latin  verses,  amongst  which 
were  some  admired  compositions  after  the  manner  of  Lucretius  on 
the  systems  of  Plato,  Descartes  and  Newton.*  He  received  his 
degree  of  Master  of  Arts,  in  1797,  and  was  the  same  year  called 
to  the  bar  by  the  Honourable  Society  of  Lincoln's  Inn.  It  was 
also  the  year  of  his  marriage  to  Miss  Caroline  Vernon,  daughter 
of  Richard  Vernon  and  Lady  Ossory,  aunt  of  Lord  Lansdowne. 
The  ceremony  was  performed  by  Sydney  Smith,  then  a  needy 

*  A  number  of  Robert  Smith's  Latin  compositions  are  preserved  in  the 
Musce  Etonenses,  where  we  find  this  elegant  Latin  version  of  the  exquisite 
Danae  of  Siraonides. 

EX    SIMONIDE. 
"  Ventus  quum  fremeret,  superque  cymbam 
Hon'cntis  furor  immineret  undae, 
Non  siccis  Danae  genis  pucllum 
Circumfusa  suum,  '  Miselle,'  dixit, 
'  0  quiB  sustineo  !  sopore  duici 
Dum  tu  solveris,  insciaque  dormis 
Securus  requie ;  neque  has  per  undas 
lilajtabile,  luce  sub  maligna, 
rormidas  iter ;  impetumque  fluctus 
Supra  c£Esariem  tuam  profundam 
Nil  curas  salientis  (ipse  moUi 
Pon-ectus  tunica,  venustus  infans) 
Nee  venti  fremitum.     Sed  o  miselle. 
Si  mecum  poteras  dolere,  saltern 
Junxisses  lacrymas  meis  querelis. 
Dormi,  care  puer !  gravesque  fluctus, 
Dormite  !  o  utinara  mei  Dolores 
Dormirent  simul !  o  Pater  Deorum, 
Cassum  hoc  consilium  sit  et  quod  ultra 
(Forte  audacius)  oro,  tu  parentis 
Ultorem  puerum,  supreme,  serves." 

Some  fine  and  eloquent  Latin  lines  on  Death,  found  in  his  desk,  after  hi* 
decease,  are  printed  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir, 


12  BOBUS   SMITH. 

young  curate,  wlio  wrote  in  a  letter  to  his  mother :  "  The  mar- 
riage took  place  in  the  library  at  Bowood,  and  all  I  can  tell  you 
of  it  is,  that  he  cried,  she  cried,  and  I  cried."*  This  alliance  was 
afterward  of  use  in  the  introduction  of  Sydney  to  the  leading 
whig  families. 

Robert  became  highly  esteemed  as  a  barrister,  and.  was  sent  to 
India  with  the  profitable  appointment  of  Advocate- General  of 
Bengal.  Eight  years  of  official  duty,  performed  to  the  admiration 
of  the  natives,  secured  to  him  a  considerable  fortune,!  with  which 
he  returned  to  London,  in  1812.  He  soon  after  entered  the 
House  of  Commons,  as  member  for  Grantham ;  but,  notwithstand- 
ing liis  acute  argumentative  turn  is  said  to  have  failed  in  his 
maiden  speech,  J  He  spoke  seldom  and  briefly  afterward,  during 
his  extended  parliamentary  career ;  while  his  talents  were  exerted 
as  a  valuable  business  member  of  committees.  In  1818,  he  con- 
tested, unsuccessfully,  the  city  of  Lincoln ;  but  carried  that  place 
in  the  election  of  1820,  finally,  retiring  from  Parliament  at  the 
dissolution  in  1826.  The  concluding  period  of  his  life  was  passed 
in  lettered  and  social  ease  and  in  retirement.  His  sympathies 
were  intimately  associated  with  those  of  his  brother  Sydney. 
The  death  of  one  followed  closely  that  of  the  other.  Robert  sur- 
vived the  canon  of   St.  Paul's   but  a   fortnight.      Thirty  years 

*  Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  4tli  Eng.  ed.,  p.  14. 

I  His  personal  estate  was  sworn,  at  his  death,  in  1845,  as  not  exceeding 
£180,000. 

t  De  Quincey  has  a  curious  reminiscence  of  this  circumstance  in  his  Essay 
on  Dr.  Parr,  to  be  found  at  page  137  of  vol.  II.,  of  "Essays  on  Philosophi- 
cal Writers  and  other  Men  of  Letters,"  published  by  Ticknor  and  Fields. 
Sydney  Smith,  who  wrote  of  his  brother  Robert  about  this  time,  as  "  a  capi- 
tal personage ;  full  of  sense,  genius,  dignity,  virtue,  and  wit,"  addressed  to 
him,  in  his  manly,  courageous  way,  a  felicitous  letter  on  this  subject,  in 
which  personal  chagrin  and  disappointment  are  smothered  under  kindness, 
and  a  genuine  solicitude.  "Whether,"  he  writes,  "you  turn  out  a  consum- 
mate orator  or  not,  will  neither  increase  nor  diminish  my  admiration  for  your 
talents,  or  my  respect  for  your  character;  but  when  a  man  is  strong,  it  is 
pleasant  to  make  that  strength  respected ;  and  you  will  be  happier  for  it,  if 
you  can  do  so,  as  I  have  no  doubt  you  will  soon."  (Letter  93  in  Mrs 
Austin's  Collection,  March  17,  1813.) 


BOBUS   SMITH.  13 

before,  when  the  former  had  been  attacked  by  a  serious  illness 
Sydney  wrote  to  him,  "  Dear  Bobus,  pray  take  care  of  yourself. 
We  shall  both  be  a  brown  infragrant  powder  in  thirty  or  forty 
years.  Let  us  contrive  to  last  out  for  the  same,  or  nearly  the 
same  time.  Weary  will  the  latter  half  of  my  pilgrimage  be,  if 
you  leave  me  in  the  lurch."* 

Robert  was  a  man  of  high  honour  and  integrity.  Thoce  who 
knew  him  intimately  spoke  in  strong  terms  of  his  wit  and  powers 
of  mind.  Moore  tells  us,  in  his  Diary,  of  his  agreeable  qualities, 
and  of  his  being  ranked,  in  his  best  time,  by  some  people,  superior 
to  Sydney.f  The  remark  is  not  unusual  in  such  cases.  Friend- 
ship readily  exaggerates  a  question  of  capacity ;  but  the  execution 
must  decide.  As  the  ability  to  succeed  with  the  public  in  exliibi- 
tions  of  mental  power  generally  brings  the  desire  along  with  it,  it 
may,  in  most  instances  be  taken  for  granted — certainly  with  the 
healthiest  of  developments — that  all  is  claimed  from  the  world 
which  can  be  enforced.  There  is  sometimes,  perhaps,  in  imputing 
these  extraordinary  merits  to  the  less-known  brothers  of  eminent 
authors  a  compensation  to  self-love  for  the  honours  which  are 
grudgingly  paid  to  acknowledged  attainments. 

The  testimonies,  however,  to  the  intellectual  strength  and  charm 
of  polished  conversation  of  Robert  Smith  are  not  to  be  discredited. 
Dr.  Parr  bestowed  upon  him,  while  both  were  living,  a  Latin 
inscription,  in  his  famous  lapidary  style,  written  in  the  presentation 
copy  of  a  book.  He  commended  his  fertile  and  skilful  Latinity ; 
his  strong,  manly,  vehement  mode  of  pleading,  free  from  captious- 
ness  or  cunning,  and,  when  the  occasion  demanded,  even  magnificent 
and  splendid ;  his  integrity  and  humanity  in  the  regulation  of  life ; 
his  greatness  of  mind  in  public  affairs.|     Sir  James  Mackintosh 

*  Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  361. 

t  Diary 'March  13,  1833. 

X  The  inscription  is  given  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  April,  1845^ 
p.  441.  Dr.  PaiT,  in  the  enumeration  of  college  worthies,  in  a  note  to  his 
Spital  Sermon,  pays  this  compliment  to  Robert  Smith,  rrj  aKpiffein,  xal  Seivorfirtf 
KOI  fitya\oTrpnrii't  tiioKi^ovi'Tos, —  {Parr's  Works,  ii.  543.  j 


14  BOBUS   SMITH. 

bears  witness,  in  his  Diary,  to  tte  eclat  of  his  legal  career  in 
India,  and  to  his  social  qualities.  "  His  fame,"  he  records,  "  among 
the  natives  is  greater  than  that  of  any  pundit  since  the  days  of 
IMenu ;"  and  again :  "  I  hear  from  Bobus ;  always  merry  and 
always  kind.  Long  live  Bobus !"  The  sincere  strength  of  ex- 
pression of  his  conversation  was  held  in  esteem.  "  Bobus's  lan- 
guage," said  Canning,  "is  the  essence  of  English."  His  old  friend, 
Lord  Carlisle,  remarks,  in  a  careful  memorial  in  the  Gentleman's 
Magazine :  "  There  was  much  in  him  of  the  sturdy  Saxon,  com- 
bined with  the  refined  and  thoroughly  finished  scholar.  No  one  was 
ever  so  clear  of  all  frippery,  and  the  only  tiling  for  which  he  prob- 
ably felt  no  toleration,  was  a  prig."*  Rogers,  the  poet  and  fas- 
tidious critic  of  society,  pronounced  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  Mal- 
thus,  and  Bobus  Smith,  the  three  acutest  men  with  whom  he  was 
ever  acquainted.!  The  sound  mind  was  enclosed  in  a  fair  body, 
as  we  learn  from  a  pleasant  anecdote  related  by  Lady  Holland. 
"  When  Talleyrand,"  she  writes,  "  was  an  emigrant  in  England, 
he  was  on  very  intimate  terms  with  Robert  Smith.  The  conver- 
sation turned  on  the  beauty  often  transmitted  from  parents  to  their 
children.  My  uncfe,  who  was  singularly  handsome  (indeed,  I 
think  I  have  seldom  seen  a  finer  specimen  of  manly  beauty,  or  a 
countenance  more  expressive  of  the  high  moral  qualities  he  pos- 
sessed), perhaps,  with  a  httle  youthful  vanity,  spoke  of  the  gi-eat 
beauty  of  his  mother,  on  which  Talleyrand,  with  a  shrug  and  a 
sly  disparaging  look  at  his  fine  face,  as  if  he  saw  nothing  to 
admire,  exclaimed,  '  Ah,  mon  ami,  c'etait  done  apparemment  mon- 
sieur voire  pere  qui  n'etait  pas  bien.' " 

The  younger  brothers  of  Sydney  were  Cecil  and  Courtenay. 
The  former  was  educated  with  Robert  at  Eton,  the  latter  with 
Sydney  at  Winchester.  Both  were  fitted  out  for  India.  Cour- 
tenay gained  distinction  there  in  the  Judiciary  as  Supreme  Judge 
of  the  Adawlut  Court  at  Calcutta.     He  was  also  a  good  oriental 

*  Obituary,  Gentleman's  Magazine,  April,  1845. 

t  Dj-ce's  KeeoUeotions  of  the  Table  Talk  of  Samuel  Rogers,  n.  194. 


BOYHOOD.  15 

scholar.  Having  accumulated  a  large  fortune,  he  returned  to  Eng- 
land late  in  life  and  died  suddenly  in  London,  in  1843,  at  the  age 
of  sixty-nine. 

Maria,  the  only  sister  hved  unmarried.  She  died  in  1816  at 
her  father's  residence  at  Bath.  Dehcate  in  constitution,  ill  health 
did  not  obscure  the  good  temper  and  amiability  of  her  disposition. 
Her  brother  Sydney  spoke  of  her  as  one  whom  he  would  have 
cultivated  as  a  friend,  if  nature  had  not  given  her  to  him  as  a 
relative. 

Robert  Smith,  the  father,  lived  to  an  advanced  age.  His  son 
Sydney,  visited  him,  at  his  residence  at  Bishop's  Lydiard  in  Somer- 
setshire, in  1821.  A  letter  to  Jeffrey  has  this  picture  of  the  old 
man:  —  "I  have  travelled  all  across  the  country  with  my  family, 
to  see  my  father,  now  eighty-two  years  of  age.  I  wish,  at  such  an 
age,  you,  and  all  like  you,  may  have  as  much  enjoyment  of  life ; 
more,  you  can  hardly  have  at  any  age.  My  father  is  one  of  the 
very  few  people  I  have  ever  seen  improved  by  age.  He  is  be- 
come careless,  indulgent,  and  anacreontic." 

The  mother  of  Sydney  Smith  died  many  years  earher  at  the 
Deginning  of  the  century.  In  feeble  health,  she  devoted  herself,  in 
the  absence  of  her  husband,  to  the  care  of  her  children ;  wrote 
letters  to  her  sons  at  Winchester  which  the  school-boys  "  gathered 
round  to  hear  read  aloud ;"  lived  to  see  Robert  and  Sydney  married, 
and  left  to  her  descendants  a  pathetic  memory  of  her  grace,  and 
•virtues. 

The  boyhood  of  Sydney  Smith  was  passed  at  school  at  South- 
ampton and  Winchester.  At  the  celebrated  foundation  of  Wilham 
of  Wykeham  he  acquired  a  good  classical  education  and  became 
the  leader  of  the  school,  entitling  himself  by  his  position  to  a 
scholarship  and  afterward  a  fellowship  at  New  College,  Oxford. 
But  though  he  was  thus  indebted  to  Winchester  for  an  early  and 
important  move  in  life,  liis  impression  of  the  habits  and  conduct  of 
the  place  fastened  upon  him  a  permanent  dislike  to  that  boasted 
institution  of  learning  and  manliness,  the  EngUsh  public  school, 


16  WINCHESTER    SCHOOL. 

Years  after,  in  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  he  wrote 
against  the  cruel  and  oppressive  system  of  fagging  pursued  in  such 
places ;  the  false  notion  of  hardening  youth  by  exposing  it  to 
privations  which  were  positive  evils,  under  plea  of  inuring  to  hard- 
ships which  there  was  little  probability  of  meeting  in  after-life ; 
the  heartless  exposure  to  premature  vice  and  the  almost  inevitable 
neglect  of  instruction,  with  so  great  a  number  of  pupDs.*  As 
captain  of  the  school,  Sydney  was  of  course  an  adept  in  the 
composition  of  Latin  verses,  one  of  the  chief  benefits  of  which  was 
the  inexhaustible  subject  of  ridicule  it  afforded  to  him  through  life. 
The  brothers  Sydney  and  Courtenay  were  such  proficients  at  Win- 
chester, that  a  round  robin  was  sent  up  by  the  pupils  to  the  effect 
that  it  was  useless  to  contend  for  the  prizes  as  the  Smiths  always 
gained  them.  Another  anecdote  places  the  young  Sydney  in  a 
picturesque  light.  A  visiter  of  distmction  came  to  the  school  and 
found  him  reading  Virgil  under  a  tree  while  his  schoolfellows 

*  Though  learning  and  academic  honours  seem  readily  to  have  been  ac- 
quired at  these  institutions  by  the  members  of  the  Smith  family,  their  personal 
experience  was  by  no  means  favourable.  "  Even  in  old  age,"  says  his  daughter 
of  her  father  Sydney,  "  I  have  heard  him  speak  with  horrour  of  the  misery  of 
the  years  he  spent  at  Winchester.  He  suffered  there  many  years  of  miseiy 
and  positive  starvation."  Courtenay  was  compelled  by  ill  usage  to  run  away 
twice  from  the  same  school.  At  a  later  day  Sydney's  son  Douglas  became 
King's  scholar  at  Westminster.  When  he  was  sent  to  the  school  in  1820  his 
father  writes  to  a  lady  correspondent:  "Douglas  is  gone  to  school;  not  with 
a  li"-ht  heart,  for  the  first  year  of  Westminster  in  College  is  severe  —  an  in- 
tense system  of  tyranny,  of  which  the  English  are  very  fond,  and  think  it  fits 
a  boy  for  the  world ;  but  the  world,  bad  as  it  is,  has  nothing  half  so  bad." 
"  The  liardships  and  cruelties  Douglas  suffered  as  a  junior  boy  from  his 
master,"  his  mother  tells  us,  "were  such  as  at  one  time  very  nearly  to  compel 
us  to  remove  him  from  the  school.  He  was  taken  home  for  a  short  period,  to 
recover  from  his  bruises  and  restore  his  eye.  His  first  act,  on  becoming 
captain  himself,  was  to  endeavour  to  ameliorate  the  condition  of  the  junior?, 
and  to  obtain  additional  comforts  for  them  from  the  head  master." 

Eogers  tells  us  in  illustration  of  the  system  (Dyce's  Table  Talk)  that 
"when  Lord  Holland  was  a  school-boy,  he  was  forced,  as  a  fag,  to  toast  bread 
with  his  fingers  for  the  breakfast  of  another  boy.  Lord  H.'s  mother  sent  him 
a  toasting-fork.  His  fagger  broke  it  over  his  head,  and  still  compelled  him 
to  prepare  the  toast  in  the  old  way.  In  consequence  of  this  his  fingers  suf 
fered  so  much  that  they  always  retained  a  withered  appearance." 


COLLEGE   CAEEER.  17 

were  at  play.  He  took  the  book  from  the  boy's  hand,  patted  hia 
head,  uttered  the  words :  "  Clever  boy !  clever  boy !  that  is  the 
way  to  conquer  the  world,"  and  clinched  the  encouraging  aphorism 
with  the  gift  of  a  shilhng.  The  encomium  and  prophecy  are  said 
to  have  produced  a  strong  impression  on  the  youthful  scholar.* 

A  brief  interval  was  passed  by  Sydney  between  Winchester  and 
Oxford.  He  was  for  six  months  in  a  boarding-school  in  France, 
at  Mont  Villiers  in  Normandy,  where  he  acquired  a  famUiar  know- 
ledge of  the  language,  wliich  he  ever  afterward  retained,  and  saw 
something  of  the  troubled  scenes  of  the  French  Revolution.  Plain 
Sydney,  for  obvious  prudential  reasons,  became  "  Le  Citoyen 
Smit"  affiliated  member  of  the  Club  of  Jacobins  of  Mont  ViUiers. 
At  New  College,  Oxford,  his  career,  of  which  little  has  been  told 
the  public,  was  one  of  industry  and  its  rewards.  He  was  safe, 
in  his  constitutional  temperance  and  sense  of  independence,  from 
the  usual  temptations  to  dissipation  and  expense.  He  received 
his  degree  of  Bachelor  of  Arts,  Oct.  10,  1792,  and  that  of  Master 
of  Arts  exactly  four  years  later.  He  secured  liis  fellowship  at  the 
earliest  moment,  with  its  perquisite  of  a  hundred  pounds  a  year, 
out  of  which  he  managed  to  support  himself  and  magnanimously 
pay  a  debt  of  thirty  pounds  which  his  brother  Courtenay  had  con- 
tracted at  Westmmster  school. 

The  world  was  now  before  Sydney  for  the  choice  of  a  profession. 
His  father  at  one  time  meditated  sending  liim  in  the  track  of  his 
brothers  to  the  East,  in  the  mercantile  line  as  supercargo  to 
China ;  the  youth  himself  naturally  thought  of  carrying  his  powers 
of  mind,  well  suited  to  the  profession,  to  the  bar ;  his  father  settled 
the  matter  by  choosing  for  liim  the  church.  Sydney,  who  was  a 
practical  optimist,  acquiesced  and  was  installed  in  1794  as  a  humble 
curate  in  the  parish  of  Netheravon  near  Amesbury  in  the  middle 
of  Salisbury  Plain.  His  parochial  domain  was  limited  to  a  few 
cottagers  and  farmers,  relieved  by  the  Sunday  dinner  with  the 
parish  squire,  Mr.  Hicks  Beach,  who  fortunately  apprehended 
*  Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  19. 


18  PUTS   INTO   2DINBURGH. 

the  sagacity  and  education  of  his  visiter,  "  took  a  fancy "  to  him, 
and  at  the  close  of  a  second  year  engaged  him  as  teacher  to  his 
eldest  son.*  A  course  at  the  university  of  Weimar  was  deter- 
mined upon ;  but  the  wars  of  the  continent  put  an  end  to  the  plan : 
and,  "  in  stress  of  politics,"  as  Sydney  Smith  himself  has  related, 
"he  put  into  Edinburgh."     This  was  m  1797. 

The  incidents  of  Sydney  Smith's  domestic  life  with  his  pupil  at 
Edinburgh  are  happily  related  in  his  correspondence  with  the 
family  of  JNIr.  Beach,  f  He  took  lodgings  in  an  excellent  quarter 
of  the  town  and  kept  up  a  bachelor's  establishment  with  his  pupil 
Michael  and  a  German  courier,  MithofFer,  the  companion  of  the 
journey.  All  sorts  of  domestic  difficulties  were  encountered.  He 
conquered  the  susceptibility  of  bis  housemaid  and  kept  her  in  his 
service,  safe  from  the  attacks  of  "  seven  sweethearts ;"  went  to 
market  himself  till  Mithoffer  became  a  better  "judge  of  meat;" 
failed  lamentably  in  a  joint  attempt  with  cook  and  courier  to 
"  make  a  pie  ;"  laid  in  beef  in  the  salting  tub  and  "  looked  into  the 
family  aifairs  like  a  fat  old  lady  of  forty."  At  the  coming  on  of 
winter  the  female  owner  of  the  premises  attempted  to  raise  the 
rent.  Sydney  resisted  the  imposition  and  held  his  ground  notwith- 
standing the  landlady  called  him  "  a  Levite,  a  scourge  of  human 
nature  and  an  extortioner,"  and  ordered  him  out  "  instantly,  bag 
and  baggage,  without  beat  of  drum  or  colours  flying." 

Judging  from  the  candid  reports  sent  home,  which  by  no  means 
exhibit  the  usual  flattery  of  such  relations,  Sydney  Smith  was  a 

*  Mr.  Hicks  Beach  at  one  time  represented  Cirencester  in  Parliament. 
Cobbett,  in  his  Rural  Rides  in  the  Counties  of  England,  gives  an  account  of  a 
visit  in  1826  to  Netheravon.  He  speaks  of  the  valley  of  the  Avon  in  which 
the  village  is  situated  as  of  great  beauty  —  and  the  population  as  having  de- 
teriorated. "  There  is  a  church,  large  enough  to  hold  a  thousand  or  two  of 
people,  and  the  whole  parish  contains  only  three  hundred  and  fifty  souls, 
men,  women,  and  children.  This  Netheravon  was  formerly  a  great  lordship, 
And  in  the  parish  there  were  three  considerable  mansion-houses,  besides  the 
one  near  the  church." 

t  The  letters  of  Sydney  Smith,  chiefly  addressed  to  Mrs.  Beach  appear  in 
t'le  later  English  editions  of  Lady  Holland's  Memoir. 


EXCURSION  TO   THE  HIGHLANDS.  19 

faithful  guardian.  T\niile  he  stimulated  mental  exertion  and 
exacted  personal  respect  he  was,  no  doubt,  a  very  agreeable  one. 
His  admirable  art  of  conveying  information,  must  have  made  in- 
struction very  much  a  pastime.  The  tuition  was  moreover  relieved 
by  summer  excursions  in  the  Highlands  and  Wales,  and  winter  ad- 
vances into  the  attractive  circles  of  Edmburgh  society. 

A  passage  of  the  Highland  experiences  is  characteristic  in 
its  double  consciousness  of  sublimity  and  inconvenience.  "  He 
knows  not  the  earth,"  Sydney  writes,  "  who  has  only  seen  it  swell- 
ing into  the  moderate  elevation,  or  sinking  to  the  gentle  descent  of 
southern  hills  and  valleys.  He  has  never  ti'od  on  the  margin  of 
the  fearful  precipice,  journej^ed  over  the  silent  wilderness,  and 
gazed  at  the  torrent  hiding  itself  in  the  profound  glen.  He  has 
never  viewed  Nature  but  as  she  is  associated  with  human  indus- 
try ;  and  is  unacquainted  with  large  tracts  of  the  earth. from  wliich 
the  care  of  man  can  hope  for  no  return ;  which  seem  never  to 
have  been  quickened  with  the  principle  of  vegetation,  or  to  have 
participated  in  the  bounties  of  Him  whose  providence  is  over  all. 
This  we  have  seen  in  the  Highlands ;  but  we  have  mortified  the 
body  in  gratifying  the  mind.  "We  have  been  forced  to  associate 
oat-cakes  and  whiskey  with  rocks  and  waterfalls,  and  humble  in  a 
dirty  room  the  conceptions  we  indulged  in  a  romantic  glen." 

Edinburgh  society  was  then  on  the  verge  of  a  new  intellectual 
development.  It  was  rich  in  honour  and  promise.  Takmg  the 
year  of  Sydney  Smith's  arrival  for  a  glance  at  its  celebrities,  we 
find  Jeffrey,  his  future  intimate  and  associate  in  friendship  and 
letters,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  recently  entered  at  the  bar,  fresh 
from  his  energetic,  youtliful  studies,  and  the  invigorating,  mental 
exercises  of  the  Speculative  Society.  Brougham,  a  young  man, 
just  entered  at  the  Speculative,  was  laying  the  foundation  of  his 
great  public  career.  "Walter  Scott,  the  mention  of  whose  name 
gives  a  glow  to  the  time,  was  twenty-six,  an  advocate — his  head 
filled  with  as  yet  undeveloped  studies  of  romantic  history,  which 
was  all  living  reality  in  the  heart  of  the  young  lover  at  the  feet  of 


20  EDINBURGH   SOCIETY. 

the  future  Lsuly  Scott.  Francis  Horner,  one  of  the  youngest 
members  of  the  whig  circle  of  the  town,  destined  to  become  honour- 
ably distinguished  in  a  brief,  public  career,  was  that  year  absent 
from  his  native  place,  polishing  off  in  England  the  asperities  of  his 
native  dialect.  Sydney  Smith,  attracted  to  him  by  his  personal 
worth  and  liberal  politics,  sought  liis  acquaintance  on  his  return, 
and  formed  a  noble  friendship  interrupted  only  by  death.  Jolm 
Allen  Avho,  not  long  after,  was  i-ecommended  by  Sydney  Smith 
to  Lord  Holland  as  his  travelling-companion  in  Spain,  whose  his- 
torical studies  and  personal  qualities  secured  for  him  a  forty 
years'  residence  at  Holland  House,  was  a  physician  and  refonn 
politician,  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven ;  highly  distinguished  for 
his  Edinburgh  Lectures  on  the  Animal  Economy.*  Lord  "Webb 
Seymour,  brother  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  attracted  by  the  oppor- 
tunities of  study  afforded  by  the  University,  came  from  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  to  Edinburgh  about  the  same  time.  He  was  then 
at  the  age  of  twenty,  a  young  man  of  singular  worth  of  character, 
and  distinguished  by  conscientious  application  to  the  mathematical 
and  metaphysical  sciences,  which,  had  he  possessed  more  vivacious 
powers  of  mind,  would  have  doubtless  produced  some  lasting  lite- 
rary monument  for  the  Avorld.  Before  he  had  completed  the 
studies,  which,  indeed,  would  have  been  life  long  with  one  of  his- 
tastes  and  temper,  he  fell  into  ill  health  and  died  at  Edinburgh, 

*  Allen,  who  frequently  figures  in  the  Sydney  Smith  Letters,  was  one  (if 
tliosc  useful  students  whose  conversation  is  more  productive  to  the  world 
than  their  writings.  He  assisted  Lord  Holland  in  his  historical  speeches,  and 
was  a  great  authority  at  Holland  House  on  matters  of  phj'sical  and  moral 
science,  politics  and  meta])hysics.  Lord  Brougham,  in  his  "  British  States- 
men," speaks  of  his  "combination  of  general  views  with  details  of  fact,"  with 
warm  admiration.  He  published  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for 
June,  1816,  on  the  Constitution  of  Parliament,  which  was  highly  spoken  of 
by  Mackintosh.  He  wrote  the  Life  of  Fox  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica ; 
"  An  Inquiry  into  the  Rise  and  Growth  of  the  Royal  Prerogative  in  Eng- 
land," "  A  Vindication  of  the  Independence  of  Scotland,"  and  a  reply  to 
Lingard,  whose  history  he  had  reviewt  d  in  the  Edinburgh.  He  was  made 
Master  of 'Dulwich  College  He  died  in  1843,  at  the  age  of  seventy-three 
leaving  property  of  about  seven  or  eight  thousand  pounds. 


EDINBURGH   SOCIETY.  21 

which  he  Lad  :vjntlnued  to  make  his  home,  at  the  age  of  forty-two, 
in  1819.  He  was  the  intimate  friend  of  Horner,  and  an  important 
member  of  the  youthful  society  from  Engh\nd  wliich  had  then 
gathered  in  the  Scottish  metropolis.*  Dugald  Stewart  was  at  that 
time  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  his  great  reputation,  at  once  popular 
and  profound,  in  his  lectures  and  books,  at  the  University  and 
with  the  pubHc.  Thomas  Brown,  his  successor  in  the  chair  of 
Moral  Philosophy,  uniting  mucli  of  the  poetical  with  more  of  the 
philosophic  mind,  Avas  a  keen,  sensitive  youth  of  twenty,  already 
becoming  distinguished  by  his  scientific  attainments.  Smith  after- 
ward recalled  the  Sunday  dinner  in  Edinburgh  with  this  intimate 
friend  ;  and  added  the  eulogy :  "  He  was  a  Lake-poet,  a  profound 
metaphysician,  and  one  of  the  most  virtuous  men  that  ever 
lived."t  John  Murra}',  afterward  Lord  Murray,  eminent  in  politi- 
cal and  judicial  life,  was  one  of  the  early  esteemed  companions  of 
Sydney  Smith ;  a  friendship  which  lasted  to  the  end.  John  Thom- 
son, subsequently  known  to  the  world  as  one  of  the  most  learned 
physicians  of  his  day,  was  also  on  Sydney's  select  list  of  intimates. 
Another  early  acquaintance  was  Charles  Hope,  afterward  Lord 
President  of  the  Court  of  Session,  whose  judicial  eloquence  and 
weight  of  character  are  celebrated  in  the  eulogy  of  LockhartJ 
The  sweet,  Scottish  poet,  and  zealous  oriental  scholar,  John  Ley- 
den,  remarkable  in  the  annals  of  self-educated  men,  had  come  up 
to  Edinburgh  from  the  wilds  of  Roxburghshire,  was  detected  by 
Scott  as  a  poet,  appreciated  by  Smith,  and  not  long  after  liberally 
aided  out  of  the  narrow  income  of  the  latter,  with  a  handsome  con- 
tribution of  forty  pounds  to  his  outfit  for  India.  There  he  per- 
ished, a  devotee  to  science,  leaving  a  few  verses,  still  admired,  as 
the  Ode  to  an  Indian  Gold  Coin,  the  memorial  of  his  toil  and  sen- 

*  Biographical  notice  of  Lord  Webb  Sej'moar,  by  Henry  Hallain,  in  tJio 
Appendix  to  vol.  i.  of  the  Memoirs  of  Horner;  a  carefully-elaborated  coin- 
position  whidi  Lord  Cockbum,  in  his  Life  of  Jeffrey,  characterizes  as  "one 
of  the  best  portraits  of  a  character  in  writing  tliat  exists." 

t  Letter  to  Sir  George  Philips,  Feb.  28,  1836. 

J  Peter's  Letters  t    his  Kinsfolk,  ii.  102. 


22  THOMAb   CAMPBELL. 

sibility.  It  wa.  at  this  season,  too,  that  Thomas  Campbell,  having 
established  himself  in  Edinburgh  the  year  of  Smith's  arrival,  pub- 
lished, in  1799,  the  first  edition  of  his  Pleasures  of  Hope,  a  lite- 
rary advent  of  mark  in  the  annals  of  that  metropoUs.  We  do  not 
liear  of  any  particular  intimacy  at  the  time  between  Campbell  and 
Smith,  but  they  must  have  been  well  acquainted.  In  a  Hst  of  the 
Friday  Club  which  grew  up  at  Edinburgh,  about  the  time  Smith 
left  for  London,  both  his  name  and  Campbell's  are  among  the 
members.*  When  Campbell  went  to  London,  Sydney  Smith  did 
him  some  "  kind  offices,"  and  in  later  life  they  met  on  pleasant 
terms  as  brother  wits.f  Amongst  the  older  members  of  the  soci- 
ety, Playfair,  Professor  of  Mathematics  at  the  University  was  in 
the  maturity  of  his  powers,  ripening  at  the  close  of  middle  life.  Of 
an  elder  generation.  Dr.  Hugh  Blair,  an  octogenarian,  was  ap- 
proaching the  term  of  his  prolonged  career.  Henry  Mackenzie, 
whose  extended  existence  brouglit  down  almost  to  the  present  day 
the  literary  association  of  a  century  ago,  was  then  warm  in  the  es- 

*  Cockburn's  Life  of  Jeffrey,  i.  1 19. 

t  Campbell,  in  a  letter,  Jan.  1808  (Beattie's  Life  and  Letters  of  Campbell, 
i.  48.5),  says  :  "  Off  I  marched  [from  his  first  dinner  at  Holland  House]  with 
Sydney  Smith;  Sydney  is  an  excellent  subject  —  but  he  too  has  done  me 
some  kind  offices,  and  that  is  enough  to  produce  a  most  green-eyed  jealousy 
in  my  noble  and  heroic  disposition !  I  was  determined  I  should  make  as 
many  good  jokes,  and  speak  as  much  as  himself;  and  so  I  did,  for  though  I 
was  dressed  at  the  dinner-table  much  like  a  barber's  clerk,  I  arrogated  greatly, 
talked  quizzically,  metaphorically ;  Sydney  said  a  few  (jood  things,  I  said 
many !  Saul  slew  his  thousands,  David  his  tens  of  tliousands."  Tliirty 
years  later,  when  Campbell  was  sixty,  there  is  an  entry  in  his  Diary  of  a 
street  rencontre  with  Sydney  Smith,  a  passing  glimpse  of  these  venerable 
wits: — "June  16,  1838 — I  met  Sydney  Smith  the  other  day.  'Campbell,' 
be  said,  'we  met  last,  two  years  ago,  in  Fleet  street;  and,  as  you  may  re- 
member, we  got  into  a  violent  argument,  but  were  separated  by  a  wagon, 
and  have  never  met  since.  Let  us  have  out  that  argument  now.  Do  you 
recollect  the  subject  V  '  No,'  I  said ;  '  I  have  clean  forgotten  the  subject ; 
but  I  remember  that  I  was  in  the  right  and  that  you  were  violent  and  in  the 
wrong !'  I  had  scarcely  uttered  these  words  when  a  violent  shower  came  on. 
I  took  refuge  in  a  shop,  and  he  in  a  cab.  He  parted  with  a  proud  threat  that 
he  would  renew  the  argument  the  next  time  we  met.  '  Very  well,'  I  said; 
'but  you  sha't.'t  get  off  again,  either  in  a  wagon  or  a  cab.' " 


MARRIAGE.  28 

teem  of  a  new  generation  of  the  admirers  of  the  Man  of  Feeling 
and  Julia  de  Roubigne.  He  was  a  genial,  bustling  man,  who  put 
his  melancholy  in  his  books  and  gave  his  mirth  to  his  friends. 

Such  was  the  society  into  which  the  young  Sydney  Smith  was 
introduced  —  a  society  abounding  in  intellectual  activity,  hving  on 
its  acquu'ed  honours  in  British  literature,  teeming  with  elements  of 
further  progress.  It  was  remarked  that,  in  after-life,  while  the 
genial  humourist  indulged  his  wit  freely  —  after  the  example  of 
Dr.  Samuel  Jolmson  —  at  the  expense  of  Scottish  characteristic^ 
of  manners  and  conversation,  and  the  pecuharities  of  some  of  his 
intimates,  he  looked  back  upon  this  time  with  respect  and  affection. 
It  is  at  least  a  proof  that  he  had  been  well  received.  His  pov- 
erty, united  with  his  susceptible  nature,  might  readily  have  made 
him  sensitive  in  the  matter. 

He  passed  five  years  at  Edinburgh,  at  the  end  of  the  second 
making  a  short  visit  to  London,  to  marry  a  lady  to  whom  he  had 
been  engaged  some  time  before,  Miss  Catherine  Amelia  Pybus, 
an  intimate  friend  of  liis  sister.  The  connection  was  a  most 
happy  one,  enduring  through  nearly  half  a  century,  supported 
by  many  virtues  and  felicities.  It  may  be  mentioned,  for  the 
consolation  of  those  who  enter  upon  married  life  under  similar 
difficulties,  that  this  union,  though  approved  of  by  the  lady's 
mother,  was  violently  opposed  by  her  brother,  Mr.  Charles  P}bus, 
a  member  of  ParUament,  and  commissioner  of  the  treasury  in 
Pitt's  administration.*     A  poor  curate,  the  tutor  to  the  son  of  a 

*  Charles  Small  Pybus  acquired  some  literary  notoriety  at  the  beginning 
of  the  century,  from  the  publication  (in  1800)  of  a  peculiarly  ill-timed  poem, 
entitled  "  The  Sovereign ;  Addressed  to  his  Imperial  Majesty  Paul,  Emperor 
of  all  the  Russias."  It  was  a  eulogy  of  the  Emperor  as  a  member  of  the 
coalition  against  France;  but,  unhappily,  at  the  time  of  publication,  Paul 
broke  off  from  the  alliance,  and  appeared  in  all  his  hideous  insanity  to  the 
English  public.  Mr.  Pybus'  mode  of  publication,  too,  was  unfortunate. 
He  issued  his  flat  heroic  couplets  in  a  folio  of  sixty  pages,  with  his  own  por- 
trait prefixed — at  the  price  of  a  guinea.  The  Gentleman's  Magazine  (Sep- 
tember, 1800)  gave  it  a  brief  and  significant  notice:  "Unfortunate  experi- 
ence has  shown,  that  the  subject  of  this  poem  was  unhapi)ily  chosen.     What 


24  CHARLES   SMALL   PYBUS. 

country  squire,  was  probably  no  very  lofty  object  in  tlie  consid- 
eration of  a  family  alliance.  Mr.  Pybua  did  not  see  tlie  poten- 
tialities of  the  future  Edinburgh  Reviewer,  popular  London 
preacher,  caustic  political  essayist,  brilliant  wit  of  Plolland  House, 
canon  of  St.  Paul's,  who  might  have  had  a  bishopric,  but  who 
could  not  fail,  as  an  author,  of  being  read  and  admired  wherever 
the  English  hterature  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  known.  It 
is  not  to  the  credit  of  ]Mr.  Pybus,  once  Lord  of  the  Admiralty, 
that  he  failed  to  set  greater  store  by  what  was  more  immediately 
within  his  view,  the  generous,  warm-hearted  soul  of  his  brother- 
in-law. 

His  wife  brought  Sydney  a  small  property,  which  he  honourably 

can  we  say  more  on  this  delicate  subject?"  The  "  Sovereign"  was  squibbed 
in  a  travesty,  "  The  Mince  Pye,  an  Heroic  Epistle,"  in  4to.  (Monthly  Review 
xxxiv.,  421 ).  Porson  reviewed  "  The  Sovereign"  in  a  pungent  critique  in  the 
Monthly  lleview  (xxxiii.,  378,  December,  1800):  "The  happy  alliteration 
resulting  from  the  title,  'A  Poem  to  Paul  by  the  Poet  Pybus,'  reminds  us  of 
a  Latin  work,  entitled,  '  Pugna  porcorura  per  Pul)lium  Porciuni,  poetam.' 
Though  this  work  is  addressed  to  the  Emperor  Paul,  it  is,  with  inimitable 
dexterity,  dedicated  to  our  own  king."  On  first  looking  into  this  magnilicent 
production,  Porson  (Kidd's  Tracts  and  Miscellaneous  Criticisraf.,  quoted  in 
Barker's  Lit.  Anecdotes)  is  said  to  have  sung  : — 

And  when  the  pie  was  opened, 

The  birds  began  to  sing, 
And  is  not  this  a  dainty  dish 
To  set  before  the  King  1" 
Pybus  has  also  a  share  in  an  epigram  by  Porson,  of  which  tljree  more  or 
less  correct  versions  are  given,  in   Notes  and   Queries  (xi.,  263,  xii.,  53). 
The  best  is  that  in  Dyce's  Porsoniana  : — 

Poet  is  nos  Icetamur  tribus, 

Pye,  Pttro  Pindar,  pamo  Pybus  : 

Si  ulterius  ire  pergis, 

Adde  his  Sir  James  Bland  Burges. 

Pye  was  the  well-known  laureate  before  Southey.  His  Alfred ;  an  Epic 
Poem,  in  six  books,  is  now  almost  forgotten.  Burges  wrote  The  Birth  and 
Triumph  of  Love,  and  Richard  the  First,  an  Epic,  the  tenth  book  of  which, 
Byron  asserted  he  had  read  at  Malta,  in  the  lining  of  a  trunk.  "  If  any  one 
doubts  it,"  he  added,  "  I  shall  buy  a  portmanteau  to  quote  from."  Burges 
had  a  share  in  another  Epic,  The  Exodiad,  written  in  association  with  the 
dramatist  Cumberland. 

Pybus  died  unmarried,  in  1810,  at  the  age  of  forty-four. 


PPvOJECTS   THE   EDINBURGH  REVIEW.  25 

.secured  to  her  and  his  children ;  his  own  contribution  to  the 
family  settlement  being  six  small,  well-worn  silver  teaspoons. 
Throwing  these  into  his  wife's  lap,  he  exclaimed,  in  his  riotous 
fun,  "  There,  Kate,  you  lucky  girl,  I  give  you  all  my  fortune !" 
He  had,  however,  liis  profession  to  look  to ;  while  his  friend,  IMr. 
I>each,  of  whose  second  son  he  had  now  charge,  made  him  a 
liberal  payment  of  seven  hundred  and  fifty  pounds.*  That  his 
talents  in  the  pulpit  at  this  period  gave  him  strong  claims  to 
attention  is  witnessed  by  a  passage  in  the  journal  of  Francis 
Horner,  who  tells  us,  that  after  passing  the  forenoon  of  April  26, 
1801,  with  Lord  Webb,  in  a  five-hours'  study  of  Bacon's  De  Aug- 
vientis  Scientiarum,  the  two  friends  "  went  afterward  to  hear 
Sydney  Smith  preach,  who  dehvercd  a  most  admirable  sermon  on 
the  true  religion  of  practical  justice  and  benevolence,  as  distin- 
guished from  ceremonial  devotion,  from  fanaticism,  and  from  the- 
ology. It  was  forcibly  distinguished  by  that  liberality  of  senti- 
ment, and  that  boldness  of  eloquence,  which  do  so  much  credit  to 
Smith's  talents.  I  may  add,  that  the  popularity  of  his  style  does 
equal  honour  to  the  audience  to  whom  it  is  addressed,  or,  at  least, 
to  that  diffusion  of  liberal  opinions  and  knowledge,  to  which  the 
members  of  so  mixed  an  audience  are  indebted  for  the  fashion  and 
temper  of  their  sentiments."t 

The  great  event  of  Sydney  Smith's  northern  residence  was 
the  commencement  of  the  Edinburgh  Review.  He  has  given  so 
grapliic  an  account  of  tliis,  in  his  peculiar  manner,  in  the  Preface 
to  his  collected  writings,  that  his  biographers  will  generally  be 
compelled  to  repeat  the  passage  : — 

"  The  principles  of  the  French  Revolution  were  then  fully 
afloat,  and  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  more  violent  and  agitated 
state  of  society.  Among  the  first  persons  with  whom  I  became 
acquainted  were.  Lord  Jeffi-ey,  Lord  Murray  (late  Lord- Advocate 
for   Scotland),  and    Lord    Brougham;    all   of  them  ma  ntaining 

*  Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  fourth  Enj;.  ed.  i.,  52. 
t  Memoir  and  Correspondence  of  Francis  Horner  i.,  1 57. 

2 


26  ASSOCIATES   IN   THE   REVIEW. 

opinions  upon  political  subjects  a  little  too  liberal  for  the  dynasty 
of  Dundas,  then  exercising  supreme  power  over  the  northern 
division  of  the  island. 

"  One  day  we  happened  to  meet  in  the  eighth  or  ninth  story  or  flat 
in  Buccleugh-place,  the  elevated  residence  of  the  then  Mr.  Jeffrey. 
I  proposed  that  we  should  set  up  a  Review ;  this  was  acceded  to 
with  acclamation.  I  was  appointed  editor,  and  remained  long 
enough  in  Edinburgh  to  edit  the  first  number  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review.     The  motto  I  proposed  for  the  review  was, 

"  '  Tenui  musam  meditamur  avena.' 
"  '  We  cultivate  literature  upon  a  little  oatmeal.' 

But  this  was  too  near  the  truth  to  be  admitted,  and  so  we  took  our 
present  grave  motto  from  Puhlius  Syriis,  of  whom  none  of  us  had, 
I  am  sure,  ever  read  a  single  line ;  and  so  began  what  has  since 
turned  out  to  be  a  very  important  and  able  journal."* 

Jeffrey  wrote  a  more  circumstantial  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
Review,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Robert  Chambers,  which  corroborates 
this  statement.  It  was  not,  however,  quite  the  extempore  under- 
taking which  might  be  inferred  from  the  language  in  which  Sydney 
Smith  Mghtly  speaks  of  his  apparently  off-hand  proposition.  There 
were  "  serious  consultations"  about  it,  Ave  are  told  by  Jeffrey,  which 
"were  attended  by  Sydney  Smith,  Horner,  Dr.  Thomas  Brown, 
Lord  IMurray,  and  some  of  them,  also  by  Lord  Webb  Seymour, 
Dr.  John  Thomson  and  Thomas  Thomson."  Smith  and  Jeffrey 
were  the  leaders  of  the  set ;  they  had  the  best  capacity  for,  and 
took  the  largest  share  in,  the  enterprise,  and  it  was  probably  due 
to  the  superior  hopefulness  of  the  former,  united  with  his  consti- 
tutional energy,  that  the  work  was  undertaken  at  all.  Jeffrey, 
whose  habit  of  mind  was  to  be,  as  his  biographer.  Lord  Cockburn, 
has  given  the  description,  "  generally  in  a  state  of  lively,  argu- 
mentative despair,"  croaked  dismally  over  the  affair,  before  the 

*  Preface  to  Works  of  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith.     Longmans,  1839. 


JbtFREY.  27 

first  number  was  out  of  the  press-room.*  Sydney,  through  all 
difficulties,  seems  to  have  held  to  the  opinion,  that  if  conducted 
fairly  and  Avith  discretion  the  success  was  certain. 

When  Jeffrey  collected  his  Contributions  to  the  Review  for  pub- 
lication in  1844,  he  dedicated  them  to  Sydney  Smith,  as  "  the  origi- 
nal projector  of  the  Edinbui'gh  Review."  To  Jeffrey  who  brought 
considerable  experience  as  a  trained  reviewer  to  the  work,  belongs 
the  honour  of  having  written  the  first  article  —  a  discussion  of 
the  share  borne  by  the  French  pliilosojihers  in  producing  their 
great  national  Revolution — thus  striking  at  once  into  the  main 
question  of  the  troubled  times.  For  thirty-eight  years  he  con- 
tinued to  contribute  to  it  compositions,  distinguished  at  once  by 
subtlety  and  enthusiasm ;  opening  to  the  public  stores  of  acute, 
philosophical  thinking ;  and  widening  this  influence  by  disclosing 
novel  methods  of  criticism  and  historical  description,  for  a  new 
school  of  Avriters.  He  was  the  prince  of  modern  reviewers ;  full, 
ready,  ingenious,  expert,  rational  and  eloquent.  Readers  of  the 
present  day  owe  him  a  monument  for  originating  and  developing 

*  There  is  a  letter  from  Jeffrey  to  Horner,  giving  a  lively  account  of  the 
various  dispositions  of  the  parties  to  the  undertaking,  dated  April,  1802 ;  the 
Review  appearing  the  following  November :  "  We  arc  in  a  miserable  state  of 
backwardness,  you  must  know,  and  have  been  giving  some  sym])toms  of 

despondency Something  is  done,  however,  and  a  good  deal,  I  hope, 

is  doing.  Smith  has  gone  through  more  than  half  his  task.  So  has  Hamil- 
ton (Alexander,  afterward  Professor  of  Sanscrit  at  Haylcybnry).  Allen 
has  made  some  progress :  and  Murray  (Jolin  A.,  afterward  Lord  Murray) 
and  myself,  I  believe,  have  studied  our  parts,  and  tuned  our  instruments ; 
and  are  almost  ready  to  begin.  On  the  other  hand  Thomson  (Dr.  John)  is 
gick.  Brown  (Dr.  Thomas,  the  metaphysician)  has  engaged  for  notliing  but 
Miss  Baillie's  Plays;  and  Timothy  (Thomas  Thomson,  the  lawyer)  has  en- 
gaged for  nothing,  but  professed  it  to  be  his  opinion,  the  other  day,  that  he 
would  never  put  pen  to  paper  in  our  cause.  Brougham  must  have  a  sen- 
tence to  himself;  and  I  am  afraid  you  will  not  tliink  it  a  pleasant  one.  You 
remember  how  cheerfully  he  approved  of  our  plan  at  first,  and  agreed  to  give 
us  an  article  or  two  without  hesitation.  TJircc  or  four  days  ago  I  proposed 
two  or  three  books  that  I  tliought  would  suit  him ;  he  answered,  with  perfect 
good  humour,  that  he  had  changed  his  view  of  our  plan  a  little,  and  ratlier 
thought,  now,  that  he  should  decline  to  have  any  connection  with  it." — Hor 
ner's  Correspondence,  i.  185. 


28  FIRST   NUMBER   OF   THE   REVIEW. 

that  intellectual  luxury,  the  speculative,  appreciative,  picturesque 
Article  —  a  profound  and  entertaining  compound  of  metaphybics, 
biography,  history  and  criticism  of  the  highest  gusto. 

The  momentum  of  Jeffrey  increased  as  he  proceeded,  his  treat- 
ment growing  more  easy,  varied  and  commanding ;  Smith  struck  his 
peculiar  vein  at  the  outset.  The  latter  wrote  seven  articles  for  the 
first  number  of  the  Edinburgh.  His  first  paragraj)h  was  a  famous 
description  of  Dr.  Parr's  wig,  humourously  turned  into  a  quiz 
on  the  arrangement  of  his  text  and  notes.  A  few  pages  further 
on  he  despatched,  in  two  or  three  senterices  of  witty  drollery,  an 
Anniversary  Sermon  before  the  Humane  Society,  by  a  Doctor  in 
Divinity.  There  are  also  some  grave  Avords  of  counsel  adminis- 
tered to  Dr.  Renuell,  Master  of  the  Temple,  for  his  aptness  "  to 
put  on  the  appearance  of  a  holy  bully,  an  evangelical  swaggerer, 
as  if  he  could  carry  his  point  against  infidelity  by  big  wox'ds  and 
strong  abuse,  and  kick  and  cuff  men  into  Cliristians."  A  JSiIi'. 
John  Bowles  is  also  pungently  rebuked  for  his  vulgar  style  of 
writing  on  the  affairs  of  France.  In  fine,  there  is  proof  in  this 
very  first  number,  of  that  moral  courage,  and  of  most  of  those 
brilliant  powers  of  thought  and  expression  which,  for  nearly  half 
a  century  after,  were  the  delight  of  Smith's  intimates  among  the 
brightest  and  most  cultivated  men  of  England.  His  style  appears 
to  have  been  fully  formed:  nor  is  it  any  marvel,  as,  with  the 
favourable  natural  disposition  which  he  inherited,  he  had  been  a 
precocious  youth  in  his  studies ;  had  been  well  disciplined  at  Ox- 
ford ;  since  sluggish  fortune  had  afforded  him  opportunity  for  med- 
itation on  the  silent  desert  of  Salisbury  Plain,  and  the  habit  of 
teaching  had  brought  all  his  faculties  promptly  to  the  surface  ;  and 
he  had,  moreover,  enjoyed,  for  several  years,  the  sharp  contests  of 
the  Edinburgh  wits,  to  give  the  keenest  edge  to  his  understanding. 
In  October,  1802,  the  date  of  the  first  publication  of  the  Edin- 
burgh Review,  he  Avas  in  his  thirty-second  year,  a  mature  age  for 
his  Avork.  His  contributions  to  the  first  three  volumes  were  nu- 
merous;    th?y  were  then   intermitted,  for  a  time,  till  they  were 


LEAVES   EDINBURGH.  20 

vigorously  resumed  in  1807,  and  continued,  wiili  liiLle  interru})tion, 
for  the  next  twenty  years.  There  were  occasional  conflicts  between 
Sydney's  humourous  style  and  the  editor's  more  sober  judgment ; 
but,  happil}  for  the  Review,  and  for  posterity,  the  wit  had  pretty 
much  his  own  way,  in  spite  of  the  snubbing.  "  I  think,"  Smith 
writes,  in  1807,  to  Jeffrey,  "you  have  spoilt  many  of  my  jokes;" 
and  we  find  the  humourist,  even  after  he  had  established  a  reputa- 
tion, restricted  "  on  the  subject  of  raillery."* 

The  prospects  of  the  Review  did  not,  at  the  outset,  promise  a 
fortune  to  the  contributoi's  and  projectors.  Indeed,  at  the  com- 
mencement, the  literary  services  rendered  to  it  Avere  voluntary  and 
unpaid.  It  was  only  after  some  consideration,  and  the  abandon- 
ment of  false  notions  on  the  subject,  that  it  Avas  found  essential  to 
estabHsh  the  work  on  a  sound  mercantile  basis,  with  a  paid  editor, 
and  paid  writers.  In  this  period  of  indecision,  with  the  purse 
held  aloof,  and  with  the  fortunes  of  the  Review  yet  to  make, 
Sydney  Smith,  whose  profitable  pupils  had  now  outgrown  his 
services,  taking  counsel  from  his  wife,  resolved  to  carry  his  talents 
to  London,  as  the  best  mart  of  intellect  and  literature,  doubtless 
looking  for  a  better  field  for  his  pulpit  oratory,  with  better  chances 
of  church  promotion  than  the  scant  episcopacy  of  Scotland  af- 
forded. He  had  preached  frequently  in  the  Edinburgh  chapel,  the 
assistant  of  its  regular  occupant,  Bishop  Sandford,  with  success, 
and  had  pubHshed  a  first  collection  of  "  Six  Sermons,"!  with 
a  striking  preface,  commenting  freely  on  the  not  uncommon  leth- 
argy, and  other  defects  of  the  pulpit.  He  took  with  him,  from 
Edinburgh,  in  addition,  a  respectable  knowledge  of  medicine, 
acquired  by  attending  the  hospitals  —  sufiicient,  at  least,  to  enrich 
his  vocabulary  with  anatomical  and  other  professional  terms,  occa- 
sionally employed  in  his  writings  with  felicity;  and  practical 
«mough  to  alleviate  the  imaginary  or  real  aihnents  of  his  country 
parishioners.     He  became  quite  fond  of  the  practice  in  an  amateui 

*  Letter  to  Jeffrey,  Miirch  17,  1822. 

\  Six  Sermons.     Edinburgh,  1800.     12mo. 


30  SIR   THOMAS    BERNARD. 

way,  stirring  up  wit  with  his  prescriptions,  and  playing  a  merry 
jingle  with  his  pestle. 

Arriving  in  London,  he  at  first  occupied  a  small  house  in 
Doughty  street,  Russell  Square,  which  he  chose,  we  are  told,  for 
the  legal  society  of  the  neighbourhood.  His  habits  of  mind  quali- 
fied him  to  enjoy  the  best  points  of  the  profession.  Romilly  and 
Mackintosh  were  among  his  acquaintances  at  the  time,  and  he 
rapidly  found  his  way  into  the  brilliant  circle  of  wits  and  diners- 
out  who  centred  about  Holland  House.  The  family  alliance  of 
his  brother  facilitated  this  social  connection,  which  common  political 
views  and  congenial  powers  of  mind  firmly  cemented.  Among 
the  wits  and  statesmen  who  have  gathered  in  those  historical  halls, 
sacred  to  literature  and  freedom,  in  the  group  of  Lansdowne, 
Russell,  Horner,  Mackintosh,  Allen,  Sharp,  Rogers,  Moore,  Lut- 
trell,  Dudley,  and  all  that  gifted  race  of  beings,  the  figure  of 
Sydney  Smith  will  always  be  remembered. 

But  the  brilliant  young  divine  had  something  else  to  attend  to, 
at  this  time,  besides  forming  distinguished  friendships.  A  narrow 
purse  had  to  be  expanded  and  filled,  to  meet  the  wants  of  an 
increasing  family,  which  now  included  a  son  and  daughter ;  Saba 
(his  recent  biographer.  Lady  Holland),  born  at  Edinburgh,  and 
Douglas.  He  applied  himself  to  his  profession,  preaching  several 
occasional  sermons,  one  of  which,  before  a  company  of  volunteers 
when  a  French  invasion  seemed  imminent,  attracted  some  attention 
from  the  public.  He  was  soon  recommended  by  the  friendship 
of   Sir   Thomas    Bernard,*  to  an  evening   preachership    at   the 

*  This  eminent  philantliropist  was  the  son  of  Sir  Francis  Bernard,  the 
Colonial  Governor  of  New  Jersey  and  Mass.achnsetts.  He  was  an  Alumnus 
of  Harvard  College,  of  the  class  of  1767.  Rcturnino;  to  England,  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  in  178i),  by  the  Society  of  the  Middle  Temple.  Having 
become  wealthy  by  marriage,  and  the  practice  of  his  profession,  he  devoted 
Iiimself  to  measures  of  philanthropy.  In  1795,  he  was  elected  treasurer  of 
tlic  Foundling  Hospital,  and  adopted  Count  Runiford's  plans  for  economy  in 
food  and  fuel.  He  projected  the  Society  for  Bettering  the  Condition  of  the 
Poor,  and  was  one  of  the  originators,  in  1799,  of  tlie  Royal  Institution,  in- 
tended for  the  'improvement  of  tiie  means  of  industry  and  domestic  comfort 


CONTEST   WITH   A   EECTOR.  31 

Foundling  Hospital,  worth  fifty  pounds  a  year,  which  was  an  im- 
portant addition  to  his  limited  income.  An  effort  made  by  him- 
self to  secure  another  position  was  less  successful.  A  friend  who 
was  the  owner  of  a  chapel,  at  that  time  occupied  by  a  congregation 
of  Swedenborgians,  offered  the  lease  of  the  building  to  Sydney 
Smith.  To  secure  the  privilege  of  pi-eaching  in  it,  it  was  neces- 
sary to  obtain  the  consent  of  the  rector  of  the  Parish.  The  letters 
addressed  him  on  the  occasion  by  Smith,  afford  the  clearest  proof 
of  the  necessity  and  povei'ty  to  which  he  was  at  this  time  reduced. 
His  pride  stooped  to  a  plea  for  the  admissibility  of  his  talents  and 
virtues  to  such  a  post,  while  he  ingeniously  complimented  the 
rector,  and  wai'ded  off  the  objection  to  a  divided  interest,  by 
reniinding  him  that  the  mere  surplus  of  his  over-crowded  churcli 
would  fill  the  few  seats  of  the  chapel,  which  would,  moreover,  thus 
be  rescued  from  what  both  considered  the  vulgar  and  injurious 
doctrines  of  the  New  Jerusalemites.  The  rector  saw  in  the  pro- 
posal violation  of  church  precedents,  danger  to  the  parochial  estab- 
lishment, and  may  have  been  naturally  disinclined  to  admit  a  rival 
near  his  throne.  He  refused  the  application.  Sydney,  Avho 
thought  it  a  grievance  that  any  ranter  might  preach,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  where  a  well-educated  clergyman,  with  the  noblest  inten- 
tion, could  not  gain  admission,  plied  him  with  jileas  and  arguments  ; 
but  without  avail.  The  rector  Avas  determined  to  protect  his 
parochial  interests ;  and  the  more  admirably  the  applicant  argued, 
the  more  danger  was  probably  seen  in  the  request.  Annoyed  by 
the  correspondence,  the  dignitary  took  refuge  in  an  affectation  of 
Christian  submission  to  the  logic  of  his  opponent.  Considering 
the  position  of  the  parties,  the  doctor  in  power  and  the  curate  in 

among  the  poor,"  as  well  as  "the  adv^ancement  of  taste  and  science."  Care 
of  the  cliimney  sweepers,  a  Free  Chapel  in  the  neij^hhourhood  of  the  Seven 
Dials,  Hospitals,  the  British  Institution  for  the  Fine  Arts,  the  Alfred  Ciul), 
were  among  his  spirited  and  benevolent  projects  and  labours.  Besides  his 
Philanthropic  Reports,  he  wrote  a  little  volume,  Spurinna ;  or,  the  Comforts 
of  Old  Age,  with  Biographical  Illustrations.  lie  died  in  1818,  at  the  age  of 
sixty-eigh*  A  memoir  of  Bernard,  written  by  his  nepliew,  the  Rev.  Jame? 
Baker,  was  published  the  next  year. 


32  CHAPEL    PREACIIIXC. 

poverty,  it  is  but  a  pitiable  illustration  of  the  "  pride  Avliich  apes 
humility,"  which  is  presented  by  a  sentence  of  his  closing  letter. 
"  I  hope  never  to  be  offended,  sir,"  he  writes,  "  at  the  freedom  of 
any  who  are  so  kind  as  to  teach  me  to  know  myself;  and  the  in- 
consistency of  my  letter  to  you,  which  you  are  so  good  as  to  point 
out,  is,  alas !  an  addition  to  the  many  inconsistencies  of  which,  I 
fear,  I  have  been  too  often  guilty  through  life." 

In  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  Sydney  Smith  subse- 
quently argued  the  general  question  of  the  allowance  of  free  com- 
petition of  preachers  within  the  parishes,  with  an  express  allusion 
to  his  own  case.  He  saw,  in  the  deprivation,  a  great  loss  of  pecu- 
liar talents  and  efficiency  to  church  interests,  and  admitted,  as  well, 
the  improbability  of  gaining  his  point.  "  We  hope  nobody,"  he 
writes,  "  wall  rate  our  sagacity  so  very  low,  as  to  imagine  we  have 
much  hope  that  any  measure  of  the  kind  will  ever  be  adopted. 
All  establishments  die  of  dignity.  They  are  too  proud  to  think 
themselves  ill,  and  to  take  a  little  physic."* 

Besides  the  poorly-paid  duty  at  the  Foundling  Hospital,  a 
favourite  resort  of  the  Londoners,  for  its  excellent  music,  and  the 
neat  display  of  its  charities,  Sydney  Smith  also  secured  a  morning 
preachership  at  Berkeley  Chapel,  where  his  genius  and  emphasis 
soon  succeeded  in  covering  empty  benches  with  a  flock  of  intelli- 
gent hearers.  He  afterward  alternated  this  service  with  a  similar 
duty  at  Fitzroy  Chapel,  with  equal  acceptabilit}'  to  the  public. 
The  character  of  these  pulpit  discourses,  may  be  judged  of 
by  tlie  "  Two  Volumes  of  Sermons"  which  he  published  under 
that  title,  at  the  close  of  this,  his  first  London  period,  in  1809. 
They  are  terse  in  expression,  marked  generally  by  strength,  pro- 
priety and  dignity.  There  is  underneath,  rather  than  lying  on  the 
surface,  a  vein  of  genuine  feeling.  The  occasional  discourses  for 
public  charities  are  manly,  vigorous  appeals ;  full  of  sympathy  for 
human  infirmity,  and  confident  reliance  on  Christian  duty.  En- 
forced by  the  preacher's  full  sonorous  tones,  their  popular  effect  may 
*  Article  on  Toleration.     Ed.  Rev.,  Feb..  1811. 


SERMONS.  Uo 

readily  be  accounUd  for.     They  have,  M-hat  may  be  remarked 
attending  all  superior  minds,  an  air,  a  voice  of  authority. 

Though  setting  out  with  th.e  zeal  of  a  reformer  in  the  pulpit, 
Sydney  Smith  really  attempted  little  innovation  upon  its  habitual 
praetice  His  published  sermons  have  nothing  special  to  distin- 
guish them  from  many  others  of  their  class.  He  probably  found, 
on  experiment,  that  there  was  little  room  for  originality  in  com- 
positions of  necessity  circumscribed  by  various  limitations ;  and 
had  the  good  sense  to  recognise  the  boundary.  In  the  Church  of 
England,  the  admirable  liturgy  leaves  little  to  be  asked  of  the 
sermon.  Sydney  Smith  was  content  that  the  Church  should  be 
her  own  expounder  in  matters  of  doctrine ;  and  directed  his  atten- 
tion to  the  practical  religious  obligations  of  life.  His  sermons, 
subsequently  preached  at  St.  Paul's,  and  to  his  country  congrega- 
tions, of  which  a  volume  Avas  published  after  his  death,*  are  grave 
and  earnest,  instinct  with  the  solemnities  of  life  and  death. 

*  Sermons  Preached  at  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  the  Foundling  IIos])itaI,  and 
several  churches  in  London ;  together  with  others  addressed  to  a  country  con- 
gregation, hy  the  late  Rev.  Sydney  Smith,  Canon  Residentiary  of  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral.  London,  1846.  Two  of  the  sermons  in  this  collection,  "On  the 
J]xcellence  of  the  Christian  Gospel,"  and  "On  the  Necessity  of  Prayer," 
were  freely  borrowed  from  Dr.  Barrow.  The  usage  of  the  English  pulpit 
would  seem  to  allow  some  liberty  in  this  particular.  Sydney  Smith  himself 
tells  us,  in  one  of  his  letters  (No.  545  in  the  collection)  that  he  preached 
])r.  Channing's  sermon  on  war  in  St.  Paul's  Cathedral :  "  I  thouglit  I  could 
not  write  anything  half  so  good,  so  I  preached  Channing."  Channing's 
direct,  manly  self-reliance  pleased  him,  the  pith  of  his  style,  and  his  separa- 
tion of  great  moral  themes  from  disabling  exceptions.  These  qualities  are 
all  to  be  observed  as  belonging  to  Sydney  Smith  himself. 

The  Christian  Observer  for  June,  1846,  makes  a  grave  representation  of 
Sydney  Smith's  obligation  to  Barrow.  The  publication,  it  sliould  be  remein- 
h.jred,  was  not  an  act  of  Smith  but  of  his  executors.  A  similar  negligence 
occurred  in  the  posthumous  publication  of  the  sermons  of  the  American 
Bishop  Ravcnscroft,  one  of  the  most  esteemed  divines  of  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Chnrch.  Sydney  Smith,  but  little  indebted  to  the  books  of 
others  fo¥  the  honours  of  his  writings,  cannot  be  supposed  to  have  practised 
any  wilful  deception  to  heighten  his  reputation.  Writing  of  the  imputatio.; 
of  receiving  attention  for  article*  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  not  from  his  pen, 
he  says :  "  I  should  have  considered  myself  tlie  lowest  of  created  beings  to 
have  disguised  mvself  in  anotiior  m'\n's  wit  and  sense,  and  to  have  rocoived 

9» 


34  LECTUIIES   ON   MORAL  PHILOSOPHY. 

If  the  world  was  indebted  to  the  residence  of  Sydney  Smith  at 
Edinburgh  for  the  estabhshment  of  the  Review,  and  the  series  of 
brilHant  articles  with  which  he  followed  up  its  first  successes, 
London  was  also  immediately  a  gainer  by  the  courses  of  lectures 
on  Moral  Philosophy,  which  he  delivered  during  three  succes- 
sive seasons,  upon  his  arrival  in  the  great  metropolis.  These 
popular  discourses,  as  well  on  abstract  as  familiar  topics,  were 
doubtless  suggested  by  his  attendance  upon  the  thoughtful  and 
stimulating  lectures  of  Dugald  Stewart,  his  intimacy  with  the 
Scottish  ratiocinators  generally,  and  with  the  original  and  inquiring 
Tiiomas  Brown.  But  if  he  was  under  obligations  to  these  men 
for  the  choice  of  subject,  and  a  certain  speculative  habit  in  the 
technical  portions  of  his  course,  there  was  a  wide  field  lying  all 
around  these  intellectual  barriers  which  he  made  entirely  his  own. 
This  was  in  what  may  be  called  the  practical  moralities  of  his  text 
—  the  quick,  genial,  kindly  introspection  with  which  he  penetrated 
to  tlie  heart  of  his  subject,  and  brought  to  the  world  noble  and 
charitable  thoughts,  full  of  liberality  of  opinion,  zeal  for  virtue 
and  human  sympathy  with  his  kind.  The  term  moral  philosophy 
truly  characterizes  them ;  lor  their  subtle  niceties  of  the  intellect, 
their  keen  distinctions,  and  rapid  play  of  wit,  are  subordinate  to 
their  healthy  sentiment,  and  a  certain  ardent  perception  of  the 
beautiful. 

There  were  tAventy-seven  lectures,  in  all,  before  the  Royal  In- 
stitution. Sydney  Smith  was  led  to  undertake  them  by  the  pro- 
l)0sals  and  encouragement  of  his  friend  Sir  Thomas  Bernard,  who 

a  reward  to  which  I  was  not  entitled."  After  this  we  may  conclude  that,  in 
preachings  tlie  sermons  of  Barrow  or  Channing,  he  was  doing  nothing  con- 
sidered out  of  the  way  or  dishonourable  in  the  English  Cliurch.  In  this 
respect  he  would  appear  to  have  followed  the  practice  of  the  chaplain  so 
judiciously  cliosen  by  Sir  Roger  de  Covcrley,  who,  upon  being  asked  of  a 
Saturday  night,  who  preached  on  the  morrow,  replied  the  Bishop  of  St. 
Asapli  in  the  morning,  and  Dr.  South  in  the  afternoon.  Another  important 
(lualilication  insisted  upon  by  the  good  knight  was  possessed  by  the  Ilevcrcnd 
Sydney  in  perfection.  He  liad  "  a  good  aspect  and  a  clear  voice."  ( Spectator, 
No.  106. 


POPULAR  SUCCESS.  35 

had  been  associated  a  few  years  before  with  the  American  Count 
Rumford,  in  the  foundation  of  the  society.  The  success  waa 
immediate.  An  audience  assembled,  composed  of  the  most  in- 
telligent society  of  the  metropolis,  large  in  numbers  for  a  popular 
lecturer  in  London  even  at  the  present  day,  numbering  six  to  eight 
hundred  persons.  This,  though  far  below  that  of  the  company  on 
any  distinguished  occasion  of  the  kind  in  New  York  or  Boston,  of 
late  years,  was  held  to  be  an  immense  achievement.  Ladies  and 
philosophers  Avere  alike  entrapped  into  admiration.  A  long  time 
after,  the  lecturer,  who  was  accustomed  to  speak  lightly  of  the  per- 
formance as  a  matter  of  literature,  remembered  with  pleasure  the 
brilliant  result.  Toward  the  close  of  his  life  he  was  applied  to  by 
Dr.  Whewell  for  some  information  on  the  subject  discussed,  when 
he  replied,  "  My  lectures  are  gone  to  the  dogs  and  are  utterly  for- 
gotten. I  knew  nothing  of  moral  philosophy,  but  I  was  thoroughly 
aware  that  I  wanted  two  hundred  pounds  to  furnish  my  house. 
The  success,  however,  was  prodigious  ;  aU  Albemarle  street  blocked 
up  with  carriages,  and  such  an  uproar  as  I  never  remember  to 
have  been  excited  by  any  other  literary  imposture."*  His  friend 
Horner,  who  was  in  London,  writes  to  Lady  Mackintosh,  at  Bom- 
bay, that  there  were  but  two  topics  in  London  that  winter,  the 
young  Eoscius  and  the  lectures  of  "the  Right  Reverend,  our 
Bishop  of  Mickleham,"  which,  as  we  learn  from  Lady  Holland's 
Memoir  was  a  familiar  title  given  to  Sydney  Smith,  from  the  seat 
of  Conversation  Sharp's  cottage  in  Surrey,  where  the  friendly  cir- 
cle frequently  met.f    It  was  something,  in  the  popular  way,  to  en- 

*  Letter  to  Dr.  Whewell,  April  8,  1843.     Memoirs,  ii.  456. 

t  Richard  Sharp  was  distinguished  in  the  conversational  circles  of  the  me- 
tropolis. Hence  his  sobriquet.  His  forte  lay  in  metaphysics.  There  is 
an  anecdote  of  Rogers  having  proposed  to  him  some  question  of  this  kind, 
when  he  somewhat  discourteously  replied,  "  There  are  only  two  men  in  Eng- 
land [probably  Mackintosh  and  Bobus  Smith]  with  whom  I  ever  talk  on 
metaphysics."  (Dyce's  Table-Talk  of  Rogers.)  Sharp  was  a  careful,  re- 
fined writer.  His  single  volume,  "  Letters  and  Essays  in  Prose  and  Verse," 
is  the  book  of  a  scholar  —  thoughtful  and  polished.  He  was  from  1806  till 
1820  in  Parliament.     He  died  'v  1835,  at  the  age  of  seventy-six,  leaving  e 


SG  LETTER  TO   WHEWELL. 

joy  a  ftisliiunable  mania  at  the  same  time  with  Master  Betty  who 
reaped  that  season,  from  his  first  London  engagements,  no  less 
than  eight  thousand  pounds.*  The  hterary  journal  which  gives  us 
an  account  of  the  latter  with  a  portrait  of  the  triumphant  prodigy, 
has  not  a  word  of  the  lecturer  at  the  Royal  Institution.  We  re- 
member how,  not  many  years  since,  disappointment  and  chagrin  at 
the  success  of  Tom  Thumb  ended  the  career  of  the  artist  Hay- 
don.  Sydney  Smith  was  made  of  other  stuff.  Had  his  fortune 
been  different,  had  Roscius  carried  away  his  audience,  the  lectu- 
rer would  have  consoled  himself  with  his  own  philosophy,  laughed 
at  the  folly  of  the  town,  and  kept  his  head  on  his  shoulders  for  a 
more  lucky  time. 

Sydney  Smith,  following  the  definition  of  Moral  Philosophy  in 
use  in  the  Scottish  Universities  where  he  had  found  it  compre- 
hending mental  philosophy  as  well,  ran  over  the  history  of  ancient 
and  modern  theories,  discussed  the  faculties  of  the  mind,  laws  of 
conception,  the  memory,  imagination,  judgment ;  the  theories  of 
the  beautiful  and  the  sublime ;  the  escaping  essences  of  wit  and 
humour ;  the  qualities  and  methods  of  the  more  direct  moral  affec- 
tions ;  the  practical  conduct  of  the  understanding,  and  the  every- 
day virtues  of  life.  "  Every  week,"  he  writes,  in  the  letter  to  Dr. 
Whewell,  which  we  have  cited,  "  I  had  a  new  theory  about  con- 
ception and  perception ;  and  supported  by  a  natural  manner,  a 
torrent  of  words,  and  an  impudence  scarcely  credible  in  this  pru- 
dent age.  Still,  in  justice  to  myself,  I  must  say  there  were  some 
good  things  in  them.  But  good  and  bad  are  all  gone."  He  did 
not  publish  them  at  the  time  or  afterward.  Resorting  to  them  as 
a  quarry,  he  drew  forth  some  passages  on  education  for  his  arti- 

fortune  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  sterlino:,  which  he  acquired  in  business,  as  a 
wholesale  hatter.  There  is  a  pleasing  anecdote  of  Grattan  in  connection  with 
Sharp's  seat  at  Mickleham.  In  the  old  age  of  the  Irish  statesman,  Horner 
took  him  down  there  on  a  visit,  in  the  spring,  "on  purpose  to  hear  the  night- 
ingales, for  he  loves  music  like  an  Italian,  and  the  country  like  a  true-bom 
Englishman."  (Horner  Correspondence,  May,  1816  ii.  355.) 
*  European  Magazmc,  xlvii.  ^"^4. 


MERITS    OF  THE   LECTURf:S.  3T 

cles  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  destroyed  many  of  the  remtdning 
pages,  and  would  have  burnt  the  whole  had  not  his  wife  interposed 
and  saved  the  mutilated  manuscripts  for  posthumous  publication. 
Enough  fortunately  survived  to  fill  an  octavo  of  four  hundred 
pages,  which  was  published  in  London,  in  1850.*  Though  incom- 
plete as  a  view  of  mental  science,  it  is  not  without  considerable 
merit  on  that  score.  It  is  a  mine  of  pleasantiies  and  subtleties,  of 
sound  thinking  in  eloquent  terms,  of  description  and  sentiment,  of 
human  nature  and  natural  history,  of  quips  and  cranks,  familiar- 
ities and  profundities,  theories  of  morality,  equally  below  the 
clouds  and  above  the  earth.  The  style  was  well  adapted  to  the  pur- 
poses of  the  popular  lecturer  with  whom  it  is  a  necessity  to  mix 
entertainment  with  instruction ;  though  there  are  few  who  car 
equal  Sydney  Smith  in  a  laughing  course  of  morals  and  meta- 
physics.f 

The  house,  situated  in  Orchard  street,  was  furnished  with  the  pro- 
ceeds, and  Sydney  Smith  continued  to  occupy  it  during  his  early 

*  Elementfiry  Sketches  of  Moral  Philosophy,  delivered  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution, in  the  years  1804,  1805,  and  1806,  by  the  late  Rev.  Sj'dney  Smith, 
M.A.     London:  Longmans,  1850,  8vo.  pp.424. 

t  Henry  Rogers,  the  metaphysician,  author  of  the  essay  on  "  Reason  and 
Faith,"  in  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  says  of  the  Lectures  : — "  Inex- 
haustible vivacity  and  variety  of  illustration,  one  would,  of  course,  expect 
from  such  a  mind  ;  but  this  is  far  from  being  all.  The  sound  judgment  and 
discrimination  with  which  he  often  treats  very  difficult  topics  —  the  equilib- 
rium of  mind  which  he  maintains  when  discussing  tliose  on  which  his  own 
idlosyncracy  might  be  supposed  to  have  led  him  astray  —  of  which  an  in- 
stance is  seen  in  his  temperate  estimate  of  the  value  of  wit  and  humour  —  the 
union  of  independence  and  modesty  with  which  he  canvasses  the  opinions  of 
those  from  whom  he  differs  —  the  comprehensiveness  of  many  of  his  specula- 
tions and  the  ingenuity  of  others — the  masterly  ease  and  perspicuity  with 
wliich  even  abstruse  thoughts  are  expressed,  and  the  frequently  original,  and 
sometimes  profound  remarks  on  human  nature,  to  which  he  gives  utterance 
—  remarks  hardly  to  be  expected  from  any  young  metaphysician,  and  least 
of  all  from  one  of  so  lively  and  mercurial  a  temperament — all  render  these 
Iect<ures  very  profitable  as  well  as  very  pleasant  reading ;  and  show  conclu- 
sively that  the  author  might,  if  he  had  pleased,  have  acquired  no  mean  repu- 
tation as  an  expositor  of  the  very  arduous  branch  of  science  to  whi<;h  th«>* 
•«lat3.'    (Ed.  Rev    A-pril,  1850.) 


88  CLUB    LIFE. 

residence  in  Londoit.  The  sketcliers  of  his  biography  have  dwelt 
with  pleasure  upon  his  mode  of  living  at  this  time.  With  an  in- 
creasing family,  his  means  were  narrow  and  required  the  practice 
of  rigid  economy.  Still  he  supported  his  family  with  honour,  and 
enjoyed,  in  their  essentials,  the  delights  of  English  hospitality. 
Costly  entertainments  he  could  not,  and,  what  was  more  to  the  pur- 
pose of  virtuous  independence,  would  not  give ;  but  he  encouraged 
a  weekly  meeting  of  fi'iends  at  his  house  by  the  entertainment  of 
a  frugal  supper,  and  when  such  men  as  Horner,  Mackintosh, 
Romilly,  Luttrell,  Lord  Holland,  and  others  of  that  stamp,  came, 
each  guest,  as  Goldsmith  says  in  the  Retaliation,  brought  the  best 
dish  in  himself.  We  are  not  to  suppose,  however,  that  the  com- 
pany ever  went  away  hungry  or  thirsty.  We  find  him,  too, 
member  of  a  weekly  dining  "  King  of  Clubs,"  where  the  intellect 
justified  the  name.  There  never  was  a  time  in  his  life,  apparently, 
when  the  social  powers  of  Smith  were  not  in  requisition.  He  was 
eminently  what  Dr.  Johnson  said  Sir  John  Hawkins  was  not,  a 
clubable  man.  In  after-life,  in  London,  he  became  a  member  of 
Johnson's  own  famous  Literary  Club.  Pity  that  no  Bo'well  bore 
him  company  in  these  resorts  !* 

When,  in  those  early  London  days,  the  host  made  his  way  on 
foot  to  the  dinner  parties  of  the  wealthy,  he  neutralized  the  as- 
tonishment of  the  lackeys  in  the  hall,  as  he  released  his  grimed 
overshoes,  by  his  humourous  remarks  on  the  occasion.  Far  prefer- 
able was  this  cheerful  encounter  with  the  world,  this  adroit  turn- 
ing of  its  conventionaUties,  this  healthy  share  in  its  activity,  to  the 

*  The  King  of  Clubs  was  founded  about  the  end  of  the  last  centur}'  by  a 
party  at  Sir  James  Mackintosh's  house  consisting  of  himself  and  Mr.  Eogcrs, 
Air.  Sharp,  Mr.  Robert  Smith  (who  gave  tlie  name  to  the  club)  Mr.  Scarlett 
and  Mr.  John  Allen.  To  these  original  members  M'cre  afterward  added  the 
names  of  many  of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  the  time,  amongst  others, 
Lords  Lansdowne,  Holland,  Brougliam,  Cooper,  King  and  Selkirk ;  Messrs. 
Porson,  Romilly,  Payne  Knight,  Horner,  Bryan  Edwards,  Sydney  Smith, 
Dumont,  Jeffrey,  Smitlison,  Tennant,  Whishaw,  Alexander  Baring,  Luttrell, 
Blake,  Hallam,  Ricardo,  Hoppner.  Mr.  Windiiam  was  to  be  bnlloted  for  on 
the  Saturday  succeeding  his  lamented  death.  The  King  of  Clubs  came  to  a 
sudden  dissolution  in  the  year  1824. — Lifu  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  i.  137. 


SOCIAL   INCONVENIENCES.  89 

too  frequent  morosity  wliicli  repines  at  the  unequal  distribution  of 
fortune,  and  eats  its  heart  (a  much  inferior  banquet  to  a  good  din- 
ner') in  soUtude.  Sydney  Smith,  by  virtue  of  his  clerical  profes- 
sion, the  family  connection  with  Lord  Holland,  his  talents,  had  a 
just  right  of  entry  into  the  best  London  society.  That  he  enjoyed 
its  privileges  without  paying  for  them  the  price  exacted  from  Moore 
and  Theodore  Hook  is  to  be  set  down  to  the  courage  and  good 
sense  of  his  nature.  That  it  was  not  without  an  eftbrt  he  overcame 
the  inequahty  of  fortune  between  him  and  his  wealthy  friends,  "in 
a  country,"  where,  as  he  insisted,  "poverty  is  infamous,"*  is  wit- 
nessed by  a  remark  he  let  fall  in  after-life,  when  he  had  tasted  the 
emoluments  of  church  preferment.  "Moralists  tell  you  of  the 
evils  of  wealth  and  station,  and  the  happiness  of  poverty.  I  have 
been  very  poor  the  greatest  part  of  my  life,  and  have  borne  it  as 
well,  I  believe,  as  most  people,  but  I  can  safely  say  that  I  have 
been  happier  every  guinea  I  have  gained.  I  well  remember  when 
]Mrs.  Sydney  and  I  were  young,  in  London,  with  no  other  equipage 
than  my  umbrella,  when  we  went  out  to  dinner  in  a  hackney 
coach,  when  the  ratthng  step  was  let  down,  and  the  proud,  pow- 
dered red  plushes  grinned,  and  her  gown  was  fringed  with  straw, 
how  the  iron  entered  into  my  soul."t  There  was  but  a  short  period 
in  Sydney  Smith's  life,  however,  in  which  he  is  to  be  looked  upon 
as  a  very  poor  man,  though  for  a  considerable  period  he  remained 
a  very  ill-rewarded  one.  In  the  first  years  of  his  London  resi- 
dence, when  he  was  making  his  way,  he  Avas  assisted  by  a  hun- 
dred pounds  a  year  from  his  brother;  but  his  chapel  preaching 
and  lecturing  provided  him  the  means  of  a  limited  independence. 
A  turn  in  politics,  on  the  death  of  Pitt,  brought  Smith's  friends, 
the  Whigs,  into  office  in  1806,  and  the  prompt  efforts  of  Lord,  or 
rather.  Lady  Holland,  secured  him  a  slice  of  church  patronage 
from  the  Chancellor,  Lord  Erskine,t  in  the  Uving  of  Foston-le-Clay. 

*ru"st  letter  to  Archdeacon  Singleton,     t  Lady  Holland's  memoir,  p.  200. 

X  Smith  went  to  thank  Erskine  for  the  appointment.     "  Oh,"  said  Erskine, 
"  don't  thank  ine,  Mr.  Smitli.     I  gave  you  the  living  because  Lad3-  Holland 


40  PLYMLEY    LETTERS. 

in  Yorksliire,  a  parish  embracing  a  small,  rude  farmer  population, 
some  eleven  miles  from  York.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  sinecure 
when  it  was  presented,  since  at  that  time  there  had  not  been  a 
resident  clergyman  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  and  Smith 
through  the  indulgence  of  his  diocesan  Archbishop  Markham,  and 
by  virtue  of  his  preachership  at  the  Foundling,  enjoyed  tlie  first 
year  or  two  of  his  incumbency  quietly  in  London,  while  a  curate 
performed  the  duty  for  him  at  the  north. 

The  year  1807  gave  birth  to  the  Letters  on  the  Subject  of  the 
Catholics,  to  my  Brother  Abraham,  who  lives  in  the  Country,  by 
Peter  Plymlcy.  They  were  ten  in  number,  and  followed  in  quick 
succession,  disturbing  not  a  liltlo  the  equanimity  of  the  ministry 
of  Canning  and  Perceval,  by  their  sharp,  pungent  attacks,  while 
strengthening  the  cause  of  liberal  reform  by  their  enormous  popu- 
lar success.*  Though  published  anonymously,  they  Avho  knew 
Sydney  Smith  knew  Peter  Plymley.  No  more  caustic  wit  had 
been  expended  on  politics  since  the  productions  of  Swift.  Peter 
Plymley's  object  was  to  rescue  the  claims  of  the  Irish  Catholics 
from  the  vast  mass  of  prejudice,  unsound  political  economy,  and 
false  reasoning  which,  as  he  justly  thought,  overlaid  justice  and 
judgment  in  the  minds  of  well-disposed  but  bigoted  and  unthinking 
Englishmen.  The  vehicle  chosen  for  the  discussion,  a  series  of 
expostulatory  letters  on  the  affairs  of  the  day,  addressed  by  a  man 
of  the  world  to  a  clergyman  in  the  country,  gave  the  author  an 
opportunity  to  play  off  his  knoAvledge  of  clerical  habitudes,  and 
the  peculiar  idiosyncracies  of  the  Establishment.     The  main  scope 

insisted  on  my  doing  so :  and  if  she  had  desired  me  to  give  it  to  the  devil,  he 
must  have  had  it." — Dyce's  Table  Talk  of  Rogers. 

*  "  The  Government  of  that  day,"  says  Sydney  Smith,  in  the  preface  to 
his  writings,  "  toolc  great  pains  to  find  out  the  author ;  all  that  they  could  find 
was,  that  they  were  brought  to  Mr.  Budd,  the  publisher,  by  the  Earl  of 
Lauderdale.  Somehow  or  another,  it  came  to  be  conjectured  that  I  was  that 
author:  I  have  always  denied  it;  but,  finding  that  I  denied  it  in  vain,  I  have 
thought  it  might  be  as  well  to  include  the  Letters  in  this  Collection  :  they  had 
an  immense  circulation  at  the  time,  and  I  think  above  twenty  thousand  copies 
were  sold." 


TOLERAnoN'.  4l 

of  Iiis  arguments  was  expediency ;  the  practical  effect  of  continu- 
ing Avrongs,  which  would  throw  the  population  of  Ireland  into 
the  arras  of  the  French ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  practical 
eflect  of  freedom,  and  free  intercourse  in  repressing  differences, 
tlie  chief  nutriment  of  which  was  oppression.  Wit,  irony,  logic, 
tiie  author's  peculiar  weapons  of  the  argumentum  ad  hominem,  and 
the  reductio  ad  ahsurdum,  are  freely  employed  in  illustration  of 
these  views.  Though  the  letters  have  lost  some  of  their  interest 
since  the  local  absurdities  of  the  day  which  they  refuted  have 
been  forgotten,  they  remain  the  completest  exhibition  of  the 
author's  powers,  in  his  favoui'ite  method  of  conquering  prejudice, 
and  substituting  perennial  wit  and  wisdom  for  darkness  and  error. 
Lessons  of  universal  interest  in  religious  toleration  may  still  be 
learnt  by  the  world,  from  this  partisan  skirmish  in  behalf  of  a 
cause  which  has  since  been  nobly  established  in  England. 

Smith  further  assisted  the  question  in  this  year,  by  a  sermon  on 
Toleration,  preached  before  the  influential  audience,  chiefly  of 
barristers,  at  the  Temple  church.  It  was,  also,  printed  at  the 
time,  and  is  included  in  his  collection  of  sermons  of  1809.  Fol- 
lowing the  outline  of  Paley,  he  defines  in  it  the  essentials  of  a 
Church  establishment :  "  An  order  of  men  set  apart  for  the  minis- 
terial office  ;  a  regular  provision  made  for  them  ;  and  a  particular 
creed  containing  the  articles  of  their  faith."  His  maintenance  of 
these  points  though  they  probably  fell  short  of  the  views  of  the 
High-Church  party,  go  beyond  what  would  be  asserted  in  America. 
Indeed,  it  would  be  a  sorry  fact  in  the  world's  history,  if  America 
had  not  fully  disproved  what  he  chose  to  anticipate  of  the  fate  of 
Christianity  in  this  hemisphere :  "  Homely  and  coarse,"  he  some- 
what gratuitously  interpolates  in  this  discourse,  "  as  these  principles 
may  appear,  to  many  speculative  men,  they  are  the  only  ones  by 
which  tl\e  existence  of  any  religion  can  be  secured  to  the  com- 
munity ;  and  we  have  now  too  much  reason  to  believe  that  the 
system  of  greater  latitude,  attempted  naturally  enough  in  the  new 
world,  will  c  id  fatally  for  the  Christian  religion,  and   for  good 


42  THE   CATHOLIC   QUESTION. 

practical  morabty."  Sydney  Smith  was  a  valiant  man  when  Le 
offended  his  friends  and  brother  churclimen  by  his  plea  for  the 
Cathohcs ;  but  he  himself  here  needs  the  mantle  of  indulgence 
cast  by  the  poet  over  the  "  fears  of  the  brave  and  folHes  of  the 
wise."  His  main  positions  are,  that  the  Roman  Church  is  to  be 
judged,  not  by  its  past  history,  but  its  present  conduct ;  that  the 
Established  Church  of  England,  with  a  proper  respect  for  it« 
powers  and  advantages,  should  be  magnanimous  to  those  who 
differ  from  it,  should  prove  its  superiority  by  charity,  and  maintain 
the  lesson  of  his  text  fi-om  St.  Paul,  that  "  God  is  not  the  author 
of  confnsion,  but  of  peace,  in  all  the  churches." 

At  the  same  time  he  enforced  his  views  of  the  Catholic  Ques- 
tion by  an  article  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,*  in  which  he  separ- 
ated the  historical  causes  of  the  disaffection  of  Ireland  growing 
out  of  the  political  conquest,  and  those  attributable  to  religious 
hostilities  —  assigning  a  slight  proportional  weight  to  the  latter. 
To  these  views  he  held  till  the  close  of  his  life.  Thirty -two  years 
later  he  wrote,  in  reviving  this  article,  in  reference  to  agitations 
which  survived  Catholic  emancipation :  "  It  is  now  only  difficult 
to  ti'anquillize  Ireland,  before  it  was  impossible.  As  to  the  dan- 
ger from  Catholic  doctrines,  I  must  leave  such  apprehensions  to 
the  respectable  anility  of  these  realms."!  One  of  the  latest  and 
most  vigorous  of  Sydney  Smith's  productions  was  devoted  to  this 
cause.  Among  his  papers,  after  his  death,  was  found  an  unfin- 
ished pamphlet,  that  "  startling  and  matchless  Fragment,"  as 
Jeffrey  called  it,  which  was  published  in  1845,  with  the  tithe,  A 
Fragment  on  the  Irish  Roman  Catholic  Church.  None  of  his  ear- 
lier writings  surpass  it  in  wit  and  felicity  of  illustration.  Every 
sentence  is  a  jest  or  an  epigram  worthy  the  fame  of  a  Pascal  or  a 
Swift.  It  is  an  advocacy  of  the  appropriation  of  the  Irish  tithes 
by  the  state,  to  the  regular  payment  of  the  Roman  Catholic  clergy, 
as  an  effective  cure  of  the  prevalent  wrangling  and  disaffection  — 
the  O'Connellism  of  the  t'me.  Upon  that  arch-agitator  himself, 
*  July,  1807.  t  Works,  1st  ed.,  i.  84. 


HESLINGTON.  43 

he  bestows  some  memorable  counsel,  not  the  less  wisdom  for  the 
humour  in  which  it  is  sheathed.  He  also  recommends  the  estab- 
lisliment  of  diplomatic  relations  with  the  Roman  Pontiff.* 

To  return  from  this  continuous  sketch  of  Sydney  Smith's  literary 
efibrts  in  the  cause  of  Cathohc  Emancipation,  to  the  year  1808.  By 
a  new  residence  bill,  clerical  incumbents  were  compelled  to  build  or 
restore  and  inhabit  the  parsonage  houses,  which,  under  the  preva- 
lent absenteeism,  had  very  numerously  gone  to  decay  throughout 
England.  The  parochial  establisliment  of  Foston-le-Clay,  thougli 
with  capabilities  of  improved  fortune  to  its  new  possessor,  wps 
one  of  the  least  inviting  for  a  restoration  or  a  residence.  The 
parsonage,  bounded  by  a  foalyard  and  a  churchyard,  was  simply 
a  kitchen  with  a  room  above  it,  ready  to  tumble  upon  the  occupant. 
Sydney  Smith  surveyed  the  premises,  the  shambling  hovel  and 
three  hundred  acres  of  glebe  land  without  tithe,  to  be  farmed  by 
himself,  and  hesitated.  To  gain  time  for  consideration,  and  to 
effect,  if  possible,  an  exchange,  he  secured  from  the  archbishop,  Dr. 
Vernon  Harcourt,  a  respite  of  three  years,  during  which  he  estab- 
lished himself  at  Heslington,  a  village  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of 
York.  The  proceeds  of  his  two  volumes  of  sermons,  and  a  loan 
from  his  brother  Robert  of  about  five  hundred  pounds,  assisted  his 
removal  from  London  to  the  north  in  the  summer  of  1809. 

Heslington  mitigated  the  descent  from  London  to  Foston,  or,  in 
Smith's  words,  "the  change  from  the  aurelia  to  the  grub  state."t  With 
the  resources  of  York  at  his  elbow,  he  lived  in  comparative  retire- 
ment, visiting  his  parish,  concocting  plans  of  study,  reading  much, 
writing  for  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  familiarizing  himself  with 
the  occupations  of  his  farm  land.     Li  truth,  though  the  society  of 

*  Sj'dncy  Smith  also  prepared  an  account  of  Englisli  misrule  in  Ireland 
from  the  earliest  date  of  English  possession,  whicli  Lady  Holland  tells  us, 
"  formed  so  fearful  a  picture  that  he  hesitated  to  give  it  to  the  world  when 
done."  Tt  still  exists  in  manuscript.  Macaulay,  who  was  consulted  on  it.i 
publication  as  a  posthumous  work,  by  Mrs.  Sydney  Smith,  recommended  ltd 
suppression.     His  letter  is  given  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir. 

+  To  Lady  Holland,  June  24.  1809, 


44  RESOURCES. 

London  was  the  natural  home  of  his  talents,  he  liked  the  practical 
demands  of  his  new  life,  the  management  of  crops  and  cattle  and 
peasants,  the  contrivances  of  building  and  the  regulation  of  his 
parish.  The  loss  of  London  society  to  an  already  estabhshed 
diner-out,  who  watched  with  eagerness  the  political  and  social 
movements  of  the  day,  was  a  privation;  but  these  things  had 
brought  with  them  something  of  satiety,  and  they  were  relin- 
quished cheerfully,  as  he  expresses  it  in  a  letter  to  Jeffrey,  "for 
more  quiet,  more  leisure,  less  expense  and  more  space  for  his 
children,"*  while  he  adds,  "Mrs.  Sydney  is  delighted  with  hei 
rustication.  She  has  suffered  all  the  evils  of  London,  and  enjoyed 
none  of  its  goods."  Li  his  philosophical  way  he  writes  the  next 
year  to  Lady  Holland:  "I  am  not  leading  precisely  the  life  I 
should  choose,  but  that  which  (all  things  considered  as  well  as  1 
could  consider  them)  appeared  to  me  the  most  eligible.  I  am  re- 
solved, therefore,  to  like  it,  and  to  reconcile  myself  to  it;  which  is 
more  manly  than  to  feign  myself  above  it,  and  to  send  up  com 
plaints  by  the  post,  of  being  thrown  away,  and  being  desolate,  and 

such  like  trash If,  with  a  pleasant  wife,  tliree  children,  a 

good  house  and  farm,  many  books,  and  many  friends,  who  wish 
me  well,  I  cannot  be  happy,  I  am  a  very  silly,  foolish  fellow,  and 
what  becomes  of  me  is  of  very  little  consequence.  I  have,  at  least, 
this  chance  of  doing  well  in  Yorkshire,  that  I  am  heartily  tired  of 
London."t  "Instead  of  being  unamused  by  trifles,"  he  writes  to 
Jeffrey,  drawing  on  his  fund  of  happiness,  "I  am,  as  I  well  knew 
I  should  be,  amused  by  them  a  great  deal  too  much ;  I  feel  an  un- 
governable interest  about  my  horses,  or  my  pigs,  or  my  plants;  I 
am  forced,  and  always  was  forced,  to  task  myself  up  into  an  inter- 
est for  any  higher  objects."J  Of  his  reading,  he  tells  Jeffrey  that, 
"  having  scarcely  looked  at  a  book  for  five  years,  I  am  rather 
hungry ."II     Burke,  Homer,  Suetonius,  Godwin's  Enquirer,  agricul- 

*  York,  Nov.  20,  1808. 

t  To  L.idy  Holland,  Hcslin^ton,  Sept.  9,  1809. 

}  To  Jeffrey,  HesliiiLTton,  Ropt.  3,  1809. 

II  To  Jeffrey,  Heslington.  ISIO. 


OXFORD   EDUCATION.  45 

tural  matters,  and  "a  great  deal  of  Adam  Smith,"  were  thrown  in 
to  fill  the  vacuum.  "I  am," 'he  writes  to  his  friend  John  Murray, 
the  lawyer  of  Edinburgh,  "reading  Locke  in  my  old  age,  never 
having  read  him  thoroughly  in  my  youth :  a  fine,  satisfactoiy  sort 
of  fellow,  but  very  long-winded."*  These  transition  years  at  Hes- 
liogton  supplied  to  the  Edinburgh  Review  a  series  of  articles 
on  Education  of  Women,  Public  Schools  and  the  Universities,  a 
Vindication  of  Fox's  Historical  Work,  an  account  of  the  Walche- 
ren  Expedition,  and  a  paper  on  Indian  afl'airs.  "  I  am  about,"  he 
writes  to  Lady  Holland,  "to  open  the  subject  of  classical  learning, 
in  the  Review,  from  which,  by  some  accident  or  other,  it  has 
hitherto  abstained.  It  will  give  great  offence,  and  therefore  be 
more  fit  for  tliis  journal,  the  genius  of  which  seems  to  consist  in 
stroking  the  animal  the  contrary  way  to  that  which  the  hair  hes." 
The  Edinburgh  Review  united  its  forces  against  the  Oxford 
system  of  education.  The  University  was  attacked  in  several 
articles  by  various  writers,  on  the  score  of  its  devotion  to  Aristotle, 
the  inefficiency  of  its  press,  particularly  in  an  edition  of  Strabo, 
and  the  excessive  employment  of  its  students  in  the  minutiae  of 
Latin  and  Greek.  The  general  assault  was  made  by  Sydney 
Smith.  The  University  was  compelled  to  defend  itself;  and  its 
renowned  champion,  Edward  Copleston,  Provost  of  Oriel,  after- 
ward Bishop  of  LlandalT,  published  "A  Reply  to  the  Calumnies 
of  the  Edinburgh  Review  against  Oxford."  This  was  met  in  the 
Edinburgh  by  an  article  evidently  proceeding  from  the  three 
authors  of  the  original  remarks  on  Aristotle,  the  edition  of  Strabo, 
and  Professional  Education.  "  A  Second  Reply  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review,"  also  from  the  pen  of  Copleston,  commenting  on  the  triple 
article,  closed  the  controversy.!     Sydney  Smith,  always  an  excel- 

*  To  John  Murray,  Heslington,  Dec.  6,  1811. 

t  The  Edinburgh  Review  articles  alluded  to  are  an  Analysis  of  Laplace's 
Mechanique  Celeste,  in  its  concluding  pages,  January,  1808;  the  Oxford 
Edition  of  Strabo,  Jan.  1809;  Edgeworth's  Professional  Education,  Oct 
1809  ;  Calumnies  against  Oxford,  April,  1810.  Copleston's  publications  aro 
entitled,  "  A  Ilcply  to  the  Cakunnies  of  the  Edinburgli  Eeview  against  Ox 


46  GUESTS  AT   HESLINGTON. 

lent  partisan  skirmisher,  with  enough  of  the  philosopher  in  hia 
generalizations,  and  of  the  jury  lawyer  in  the  skill  of  his  manage- 
ment of  points,  held  the  ear  of  the  public  on  the  question.  In  the 
edition  of  his  writings,  the  paper  on  Professional  Education  is  one 
of  the  most  complete,  and  certainly  not  the  least  brilliant  of  his 
essays.  The  exclusive  pedantry  of  Oxford  was  fair  game  for  a 
satirist ;  the  attack,  since  grown  familiar,  and  followed  by  various 
degrees  of  reform,  was  then  a  novelty ;  it  was  something  to  invade 
the  dignitjr  of  the  ancient  University,  and  compel  it  to  a  defence: 
the  pubhc  was  entertained,  and  Sydney  Smith  had  liis  revenge 
upon  the  Busbys  of  his  school-boy  days  for  their  infliction  of  longs 
and  shorts.  It  was  a  capital  subject  of  mirth  with  him,  of  which 
he  never  tired.  The  reply  to  Copleston  was  not  over-delicate  in 
its  choice  of  terms.  It  was,  in  fact,  a  specimen  of  the  old  Edin- 
burgh swagger,  relieved  by  some  excellent  passes  of  humour. 

While  thus  continuing  his  literary  pursuits,  Sydney  Smith  was 
not  altogether  cut  off  from  politics  and  society.  In  sympathy  with 
the  times  he  projected  "  Common  Sense  for  1810,"  a  pamphlet  which 
it  is  to  be  regretted  he  never  accomplished  as  it  would  doubtless 
have  formed  a  brilliant  companion  to  the  Plymley  Letters.  He 
paid  visits  to  Lord  Grey,  whom  he  greatly  admired,  at  Howick, 
and  mads  flying  journeys  to  London  and  Holland  House.  Rom- 
illy,  Mackintosh,  Horner,  and  others,  visited  him — among  the  rest, 
Jeffrey,  "  who  came  with  an  American  gentleman,  Mr.  Simond, 
and  his  niece,  Miss  Wilkes.  We  little  suspected,"  adds  Lady  Hol- 
land, "  that  this  lady,  great  niece  to  the  agita'or  Wilkes,  was  so 
soon  after  to  become  Mrs.  Jeffrey.* 

ford,  containing  an  Account  of  Studies  pursued  in  that  University,"  and 
"  A  Second  Reply  to  the  Edinburgh  Review,"  both  in  1810.  The  Quarterly 
Review  for  August,  1810,  reviews  the  whole  discussion. 

*  "About  the  close  of  1810,  Mons.  Simond,  a  French  gentleman,  who  had 
left  his  country  early  in  the  revolution,  came  with  his  wife  and  a  niece  to  visit 
some  friends  in  Edinburgh,  where  they  remained  some  weeks.  Madame  Si- 
mond was  a  sister  of  Charles  Wilkes,  Ef-q.,  banker  in  New  York,  a  nephew  of 
the  famous  John  ;  and  the  niece  was  Miss  Charlotte  Wilkes,  a  daughter  of 
this  Charles.     It  was  during  this  visi-t,  I  believe,  that  she  and  JdlVej  tirs* 


BUILDING   AT   FOSTON.  47 

Having  given  up  all  hopes  of  exchanging  his  undesirable  living 
of  Foston,  he  commenced  the  reconstruction  of  the  parsonage- 
house.  His  account  of  the  proceedings  is  too  characteristic  to  be 
given  in  other  terms  than  his  own.  "  All  my  efforts  for  an  ex- 
change having  failed,  I  asked  and  obtained  from  my  friend  the 
Archbishop  another  year  to  build  in.  And  I  then  set  my  shoul- 
der to  the  wheel  in  good  earnest ;  sent  for  an  architect ;  he  produ- 
ced plans  which  would  have  ruined  me.  I  made  him  my  bow  :  '  You 
build  for  glory,  sir ;  I,  for  use.'  I  returned  him  his  plans,  with 
five-and-twenty  pounds,  and  sat  down  in  my  thinking-chair,  and  in 
a  few  hours  INIrs.  Sydney  and  I  concocted  a  plan  which  has  pro- 
duced what  I  call  the  model  of  parsonage-houses. 

"  I  then  took  to  horse  to  provide  bricks  and  timber ;  was  advised 
to  make  my  own  bricks,  of  my  own  clay ;  of  course,  when  the 
kiln  was  opened,  all  bad  ;  mounted  my  horse  again,  and  in  twenty- 
four  hours  had  bought  thousands  of  bricks  and  tons  of  timber.  "Was 
advised  by  neighbouring  gentlemen  to  employ  oxen  :  bought  fcur 
— Tug  and  Lug,  Hawl  and  Crawl;  but  Tug  and  Lug  took. to 
fainting,  and  required  buckets  of  sal-volatile,  and  Hawl  and  Crawl 
to  lie  down  in  the  mud.  So  I  did  as  I  ought  to  have  done  at  first 
— took  the  advice  of  the  farmer  instead  of  the  gentleman  ;  sold  my 
oxen,  bought  a  team  of  horses,  and  at  last,  in  spite  of  a  frost  which 
delayed  me  six  weeks,  in  spite  of  walls  running  down  with  wet,  in 
spite  of  the  advice  and  remonstrances  of  friends  who  predicted  our 
death,  in  spite  of  an  infant  of  six  months  old,  who  had  never  been 
out  of  the  house,  I  landed  my  family  in  my  new  house  nine  months 
after  laying  the  first  stone,  on  the  20th  of  March ;  and  performed 

met." —  Cockbiirn's  Life  of  Jeffrey,  i.  168,  where  an  account  of  the  great  re- 
viewer's subsequent  visit  to  America,  in  tlie  midst  of  the  war  in  1813,  and  of 
his  marriage  to  the  lady  in  America,  is  given.  Louis  Simond  published  sev- 
eral books  of  travel,  highly  esteemed  for  their  political  and  economical  social 
Studies.  His  "Journal  of  a  Tour  and  Residence  in  Great  Britain  in  1810- 
11,"  appeared,  translated  from  the  French,  in  1816.  In  1822  he  "published  big 
"Travels  in  Switzerland,"  peiformcd  in  1817-18-19.  "Travels  in  Italy  and 
Sicily  appeared  at  Paris  in  1827.  He  passed  the  latter  years  of  his  life  a; 
Greneva,  where  he  died  in  July,  1831. 


48  THE  IMMORTAL. 

my  promise  to  the  letter  to  the  Ai'cliblshop,  by  issuing  forth  at 
midiiiglit  with  n  lantern  to  meet  the  last  cart,  with  the  cook  and 
the  cat,  which  had  stuck  in  the  mud,  and  fairly  established  theni 
before  twelve  o'clock  at  niglit  in  the  new  parsonage-house  —  a  feat, 
taking  ignorance,  inexperience,  and  poverty,  into  consideration, 
requiring,  I  assure  you,  no  small  degree  of  energy. 

"  It  made  me  a  very  poor  man  for  many  years,  but  I  never  re- 
pented it.  I  turned  schoolmaster,  to  educate  my  son,  as  I  could 
not  afford  to  send  him  to  school.  Mrs.  Sydney  turned  school- 
mistress, to  educate  my  girls,  as  I  could  not  afford  a  governess.  I 
turned  farmer,  as  I  could  not  let  my  land.  A  man-servant  was 
too  expensive ;  so  I  caught  up  a  little  garden-girl,  made  like  a 
milestone,  christened  her  Bunch,  put  a  napkin  in  her  hand,  and 
made  her  my  butler.  The  girls  taught  her  to  read,  Mrs.  Sydney, 
to  wait,  and  I  undertook  her  morals  ;  Bunch  became  the  best  but- 
ler in  the  county. 

"  I  had  Uttle  furniture,  so  I  bought  a  cart-load  of  deals ;  took  a 
carpenter  (who  came  to  me  for  parish  relief,  called  Jack  Robinson), 
with  a  face  like  a  full-moon,  into  my  service ;  established  him  in  a 
barn,  and  said,  '  Jack,  furnish  my  house.'     You  see  the  result ! 

"  At  last  it  was  suggested  that  a  carriage  was  much  wanted  in 
the  establishment ;  after  diligent  search,  I  discovered  in  the  back 
settlements  of  a  York  coachmaker  an  ancient  green  chariot,  sup- 
posed to  have  been  the  earliest  invention  of  the  kind.  I  brought 
it  home  in  triumph  to  my  admiring  family.  Being  somewhat  dilap- 
idated, the  village  tailor  lined  it,  the  village  blacksmith  repaired  it ; 
nay  (but  for  Mrs.  Sydney's  earnest  entreaties),  we  believe  the  vil- 
lage painter  would  have  exercised  his  genius  upon  the  exterior ; 
it  escaped  this  danger,  however,  and  the  result  was  wonderful. 
Each  year  added  to  its  charms  :  it  grew  younger  and  younger ;  a 
new  wheel,  a  new  spring;  I  christened  it  the  Immortal;  it  was 
known  all  over  the  neighbourhood ;  the  viUage  boys  cheered  it, 
and  the  village  dogs  barked  at  it;  but '  Faber  mete  fortunae'  was 
tny  motto,  and  we  had  no  false  shame. 


THE   FLITTIXG.  49 

"  Added  to  all  these  domestic  cares,  I  avus  village  parson,  village 
doctor,  village  comforter,  village  magistrate,  and  Edinburgh  Re- 
viewer; so  you  sec  I  had  not  much  time  left  on  my  hands  to  re- 
gret Loudon. 

"  My  house  vras  considered  the  ugliest  in  the  county,  but  all  ad- 
mitted it  was  one  of  the  most  comfort;ible ;  and  we  did  not  die,  us 
our  friends  had  predicted,  of  the  damp  walls  of  the  parsonage." 

The  establishment,  with  its  farm  appurtenances,  into  which  Syd- 
ney Smith  thus  inducted  himself,  cost  him  some  four  thousand  pounds 
in  all,  and  of  course  seriously  hampered  his  fortunes  during  his 
protracted,  involuntary,  though  not  unhappy  residence.  The  in- 
come of  Foston  was  five  hundix'd  pounds ;  increased  for  the  last 
two  or  three  years  to  eight  hundred.* 

Lady  Holland,  with  a  woman's  feeling  for  the  details  of  do- 
mestic life,  has  given  a  genial  sketch  of  this  new  flitting — it 
was  in  the  spring  of  1814 — with  the  accessories  of  character  and 
homely  incident. 

"  It  was  a  cold,  bright  ISIarch  day,  with  a  biting  east  wind.  The 
beds  we  left  in  the  morning  had  to  be  packed  up  and  slept  on  at 
night ;  wagon  after  wagon  of  furniture  poured  in  every  minute ; 
the  roads  were  so  cut  up  that  the  carriage  could  not  reach  tlie 
door ;  and  my  mother  lost  her  shoe  in  the  mud,  which  was  ankle- 
deep,  while  bringing  her  infant  up  to  the  house  in  her  arms. 

"  But  oh,  the  shout  of  joy  as  we  entered  and  took  possession  !  — 
the  fii'st  time  in  our  lives  that  we  had  inhabited  a  house  of  our 
own.  How  we  admired  it,  ugly  as  it  was !  With  what  pride  my 
dear  father  welcomed  us,  and  took  us  from  room  to  room ;  old 
]S[olly  Mills,  the  milk-woman,  who  had  had  charge  of  the  house, 
grinning  w^ith  delight  in  the  background.  We  thought  it  a  palace ; 
yet  the  drawing-room  had  no  door,  the  bare  plaster  walls  ran  down 
with  wet,  the  windows  were  like  ground-glass,  from  the  moisture 
which  had 'to  be  wiped  up  several  times  a  day  by  the  housemaid. 
No  carpets,  no  chairs,  nothing  unpacked ;  rough  men  bringing  v\ 
*  First  Letter  to  Arclidcacon  Singietnn. 


50  ANNIE    KAY. 

rouglier  packages  at  every  moment.  But  then  was  the  time  to 
behold  my  futhei" !  —  amidst  the  confusion,  he  thougl  t  for  eveiy- 
hody,  cared  for  everybody,  encouraged  everybody,  kept  everybody 
in  good  humour.  IIow  lie  exerted  himself!  hoAV  his  loud,  rich 
voice  might  be  heard  in  all  directions,  ordering,  arranging,  expiain- 
mg,  till  the  household  storm  gradually  subsided!  Each  half-hour 
improved  our  condition ;  fires  blazed  in  every  room ;  at  last  we 
all  sat  down  to  our  tea,  spread  by  ourselves  on  a  liuge  package  be- 
fore the  drawing-room  fire,  sitting  on  boxes  round  it ;  and  retired 
to  sleep  on  our  beds  placed  on  the  floor — the  happiest,  merriest, 
and  busiest  family  in  Christendom.  In  a  few  days,  under  my 
father's  active  exertions,  everything  was  arranged  with  tolerable 
comfort  in  the  little  household,  and  it  began  to  assume  its  wonted 
appearance. 

"  In  speaking  of  the  establishment  of  Foston,  Annie  Kay  must 
not  be  forgotten.  She  entered  our  ser\'ice  at  nineteen  years  of 
age,  but  possessing  a  degree  of  sense  and  lady-like  feeling  not  often 
found  in  her  situation  of  life — first  as  nurse,  then  as  ladj^'s-maid, 
then  housekeeper,  apothecary's  boy,  factotum,  and  friend.  All  who 
have  been  much  at  Foston  or  Combe  Florey  know  Annie  Kay ; 
she  w'as  called  into  consultation  on  every  family  event,  and  proved 
herself  a  worthy  oracle.  Her  counsels  were  delivered  in  the  softest 
voice,  with  the  sweetest  smile,  and  in  the  broadest  Yorkshire.  She 
ended  by  nursing  her  old  master  through  his  long  and  painful  ill- 
ness, night  and  day ;  she  was  with  him  at  his  death ;  she  followed 
him  to  his  grave;  she  was  remembered  in  his  will;  she  survived 
him  but  two  yeai's,  which  she  spent  in  my  mother's  house  ;  and, 
after  her  long  and  faithful  service  of  thirty  years,  was  buried  by 
my  mother  in  the  same  cemeteiy  as  her  master,  respected  and 
lamented  by  all  his  family,  as  the  most  faithful  of  servants  and 
friends. 

"  So  much  for  the  interior  of  the  estabUshment.  Out-of-doors 
reigned  Molly  Mills  —  cow,  pig,  poultry,  garden,  and  post-woman  ; 
with  her  short  red   petticoat,  her  legs  like  millposts,  her  high 


MUSTEIl   SJIITli.  51 

cheek-bones  red  and  slirivclled  like  winter  apples  ;  a  peifect  speci- 
men of  a  '  yeowoman  ;'  a  sort  of  kindred  spirit,  too  ;  for  slie  was 
the  wit  of  the  village,  and  delighted  in  a  eraek  with  her  iT\a.-ter, 
when  she  could  get  it.  She  was  as  important  in  her  vocation  as 
Annie  Kay  in  hers ;  and  INIolIy  here,  and  Molly  there,  might  be 
lieard  in  every  direction.  jMolIy  Avas  always  merry,  willing,  active, 
and  true  as  gold  ;  she  had  little  book-learning,  but  enough  to 
bring  up  tAvo  fine  athletic  sons,  as  honest  as  herself;  though,  unlike 
her,  they  were  never  seen  to  smile,  but  were  as  solemn  as  two 
owls,  and  would  not  have  said  a  civil  thing  to  save  their  lives. 
They  ruled  the  farm.  Add  to  these  the  pet  donkey,  Bitty,  already 
inti'oduced  to  the  public ;  a  tame  fawn,  at  last  dismissed  for  eating 
the  maid's  clothes,  which  he  preferred  to  any  other  diet ;  and  a 
lame  goose,  condemned  at  last  to  be  roasted  for  eating  all  the  fruit 
in  the  garden;  together  with  Bunch  and  Jack  Robinson  —  and 
you  have  the  establishment." 

An  anecdote  of  Smith's  first  visit  to  Foston,  preserved  by  Lady 
Holland,  is  a  good  index  of  his  character  at  all  times,  and  of  his 
subsequent  position  in  the  village.  The  house  and  gi'ounds  pre- 
sented the  most  forbidding  appearance.  To  shed  light  upon  the 
.scene :  "  The  clerk,  the  most  important  man  in  the  village,  was 
summoned ;  a  man  who  had  numbered  eiglity  years,  looking,  with 
his  long  gray  hair,  his  threadbare  coat,  deep  wrinkles,  stooping 
gait,  and  crutch-stick,  more  ancient  than  the  parsonage-house.  He 
looked  at  my  father  for  some  time  from  under  his  gray,  shaggy 
eyebrows,  and  held  a  long  conversation  with  him,  in  which  the  old 
clerk  showed  that  age  had  not  quenched  the  natural  shrewdness 
of  the  Yorkshireman.  At  last,  after  a  pause,  he  said,  striking  his 
crutch-stick  on  the  ground,  '  Muster  Smith,  it  often  stroikes  moy 
moind,  that  people  as  comes  frae  London  is  such  fools.  .  .  .  But 
you,'  he  said  (giving  him  a  nudge  with  his  stick),  '  I  see  you  are 
no  fool.'"  The  foraging  accommodations  of  the  parish  were  once 
feelingly  described  by  Sydney  Smith :  "  My  living  in  Yorkshire 
was  so  far  out  of  the  way,  that  it  Avas  actually  twelve  miles  fi'om 


yJ:  FOSTOx  life. 

a  lemon."  In  Lis  je&ting  way,  he  said,  "  Wlien  I  began  to  tliump 
the  cusliion  of  my  pulpit,  on  first  coming  to  Foston,  as  is  my  wont 
when  I  preach,  the  accumulated  dust  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
made  such  a  cloud,  that  for  some  minutes  I  lost  sight  of  my  con- 
gregation." 

Sydney  Smith  Avas  forty-three  when  he  began  his  residence  at 
Foston.  He  I'emained  there  fourteen  years,  until  his  appointment, 
by  Lord  Chancellor  Lyndhurst,  to  a  vacant  stall  at  Bristol.  They 
were  years  of  some  privation,  which  was  overcome  by  economy, 
and  the  incumbent's  great  mastery  of  the  laws  of  human  happiness. 
At  one  time,  in  a  season  of  the  failure  of  the  harvest,  the  family, 
with  their  neighbours,  were  obhged  to  dispense  Avith  bread,  and 
consume,  as  best  they  could,  the  damaged,  sprouted  wheat.  A 
malignant  fever  in  the  parish  was  the  consequence  of  this  distress, 
Avhich  brought  out  the  medical  and  humanitary  resources  of  the 
rector.  Courageous  in  risking  life  on  this,  as  on  similar  occasions, 
he  did  much  to  alleviate  the  general  misery.  Inability  to  purchase 
books  at  this  period,  must  have  been  a  frequent  annoyance.  The 
omniscient  Edinburgh  Reviewer  conscientiously  abstained  from 
running  in  debt  for  a  cyclopaedia.  His  friends,  however,  and  the 
neighbouring  library  of  Castle  Howard,  where  he  enjoyed  a  warm 
intimacy  with  the  Earl  of  Carlisle,  in  a  great  measure  supphed  the 
deficiency.* 

*  The  Earl  of  Carlisle  of  tliis  period  ^vas  Frederick  (grandfather  of  the 
present  Earl),  the  relative  and  f:;uardian  of  Lord  Byron.  The  poet  dedicated 
to  him  his  Hours  of  Idleness,  vilified  him  in  his  famous  satire,  and  apolojrized 
in  Cliilde  Harold.  Lord  Carlisle  wrote  trajredies :  The  Father's  Reven-ie 
(which  Dr.  Johnson  and  Walpolo  praised),  The  Ste])-I\Iother,  and  variouH 
Poems.  He  came  to  America  dnrinfr  the  Kcvolutionary  war,  fellow-commis- 
sioner with  William  Eden  (Lord  Auckland),  and  Governor  Johnstone,  with 
offers  of  peace,  and  was  challenp:ed  hy  La  Fayette,  f<jr  terms  used  in  the  Ad- 
dress to  Congress,  derogatory  to  France.  In  Jesse's  "  Selwyn  and  his  Contem- 
poraries," there  are  numerous  agreeahle  letters  of  Carlisle  —  among  them  two, 
written  from  Philadelphia  and  New  York,  with  notices  of  "  Mr.  Washington," 
and  the  war,  which  were  pleasantly  introduced  hy  Mr.  Thackeray,  in  his 
recent  lecture  on  George  III.  Lord  Carlisle  died  in  1823.  at  the  age  of 
seventv-seven. 


HOUSEKEEPING    RU.MOUHS.  'oS 

In  the  midst  of  all  embarrassments,  however,  Foston  was  not 
an  unhappy  home.  The  humours  of  its  lord  had  full  play.  He 
was  the  hero  of  domes(i<^  life,  his  resources  —  his  kindness,  his 
wit,  his  j)er.vonal  humour,  never  iailing.  Kumerous  anecdotes  cf 
this  nature  are  preserved  in  the  narrative  of  his  daughter  —  the 
charm  of  whose  work  is  its  thoroughly  woman's  picture  of  the 
household  habits,  Avhich,  after  all,  stamp  the  man.  They  may  be 
briefly  summed  up  in  his  art  of  happiness  ;  his  industry,  constant 
self-culture,  a  curious  fondness  for  the  minutias  of  the  menage, 
attention  to  the  common  duties  of  life,  care  of  his  parishioners, 
attachment  of  his  servants,  and  the  cement  of  those  noble  friend- 
ehips  which  brought  Horner,  Mackintosh,  Jeffrey,  the  Hollands, 
Rogers,  to  his  hospitable  home  —  an  inviting  baiting-place  for  these 
keen  appreciators  of  wit  and  good-nature,  which  he  chai-acteristi- 
cally  christened  the  Rector's  Head. 

Within  doors  he  made  good  taste  and  original  management 
do  the  work  of  wealth  in  promoting  comfort.  He  contrived  cheap 
decorations  for  his  windows,  his  ceilings,  and  his  fireplaces,  in- 
geniously brightening  his  fires  by  a  ventilating  aperture.  Hip 
bed-rooms  were  placarded  with  unframed  prints,  full  of  elevating 
suggestions.  The  arrangements  of  his  store-room  and  apothe- 
cary's shop  were  among  the  curiosities  of  the  place.  Out  of  doors 
his  management  was  quite  as  peculiar.  He  oddly  economized 
time  in  farming  his  acres,  by  the  use  of  "  a  tremendous  speaking 
trumpet"  at  his  door,  with  the  supplement  of  a  spy-glass,  to  bririg 
the  operations  under  Adew.  His  humanity  to  his  cattle  was  shown 
in  a  Avay  said  to  have  been  practised  by  a  Duke  of  Argyle,  in 
alleviating  the  distressed  cuticles  of  his  irritated  tenantry.  He  set 
up  a  skeleton  machine  in  the  midst  of  a  field,  ingeniously  arranged 
for  eveiy  four-footed  creature  to  rub  against,  which  he  called  his 
Universal  Scratcher.  He  carried  his  household  to  church,  a  mile 
distant  from  the  parsonage,  through  the  miry  clay,  more  succesK- 
fuUy  than  the  family  of  the  Vicar  of  "Wakefield,  in  the  adventure 
of  Blackberry  and  the  pillion,  in  his  old  furbished-up  carriage,  the 


54  BUNCH. 

Immortal,  drawn  by  his  cart-horse  in  shafts,  and  guided  by  the 
carter  on  foot.  At  the  barn-hke  church  fifty  persons  were,  on  one 
occasion,  probably  an  average  one,  present. 

The  portrait  of  Buncli,  that  important  portion  of  the  Foston 
family,  is  immortal ;  a  sketch  from  reality  equal  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  Dickens.  Mrs.  Marcet,  the  author  of  the  Conversations 
on  Political  Economy,  an  old  frieiKl  of  the  host,  exhibits  her  in 
full  play : — 

"  I  was  coming  down  stairs  one  morning,  when  Mr.  Smitli  sud- 
denly said  to  Bunch,  who  was  passing,  '  Bunch,  do  you  like  roast 
duck  or  boiled  chicken  ?'  Bunch  had  probably  never  tasted  either 
the  one  or  the  other  in  her  life,  but  answered,  without  a^moment's 
hesitation,  '  Roast  duck,  please,  sir,'  and  disappeared.  I  laughed. 
'  You  may  laugh,'  said  he,  '  but  you  have  no  idea  of  the  labour  it 
has  cost  me  to  give  her  that  decision  of  character.  The  Yorkshire 
peasantry  are  the  quickest  and  shrewdest  in  the  world,  but  you 
can  never  get  a  direct  answer  from  them ;  if  you  ask  them  even 
their  own  names,  they  always  scratch  their  heads,  and  say,  *  A 's 
sur  ai  don't  knaw,  sir ;'  but  I  have  bi'ought  Bunch  to  such  perfec- 
tion, that  she  never  hesitates  now  on  any  subject,  however  difficult. 
I  am  very  strict  with  her.  Would  you  like  to  hear  her  repeat 
her  crimes  ?  She  has  them  by  heart,  and  repeats  them  every  day.' 
*  Come  here,  Bunch !'  calling  out  to  her,  '  come  and  repeat  your 
crimes  to  INIrs.  Marcet ;'  and  Bunch,  a  clean,  fair,  squat,  tidy  little 
girl,  about  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age,  quite  as  a  matter  of  course, 
as  grave  as  a  judge,  without  the  least  hesitation,  and  with  a  loud 
voice,  began  to  repeat :  '  Plate-snatching,  gravy-spilling,  door- 
slamming,  blue-bottle-fly-catching,  and  courtesy-bobbing.'  '  Ex- 
plain to  Mrs.  Marcet  what  blue-bottle-fly-catching  is.'  '  Standing, 
with  my  mouth  open  and  not  attending,  sir.'  '  And  what  is  court- 
esy-bobbing ?'  '  Courtesying  to  the  centre  of  the  eartli,  please, 
sir.'  '  Good  girl !  now  you  may  go.'  '  She  makes  a  capital 
waiter,  I  assure  you ;  on  state  occasions  Jack  Robinson,  my  car- 
penter, takes  off  his  apron  and  waits  too,  and  does  pretty  well,  but 


GILDED    PILLS.  55 

he  sometimes  natuniUy  makes  a  mistake  and  sticks  a  gimlet  into 
the  bread  instead  of  a  fork.'" 

Mrs.  Marcet  also  supplies  to  the  "  Memoir"  some  pleasing  anec- 
dotes of  those  medical  traits,  the  foundation  of  which  had  been 
laid  at  Edinburgh.  Sydney  is  taking  her  the  rounds  of  his  Fos- 
ton  parsonage : — 

" '  But  I  came  up  to  speak  to  Annie  Kay.  Where  is  Annie 
Kay?  Ring  the  bell  for  Annie  Kay.'  Kay  appeared.  'Bring 
me  my  medicine-book,  Annie  Kay.  Kay  is  my  apothecary's  boy, 
and  makes  up  my  medicines.'  Kay  appears  with  the  book.  '  I 
am  a  great  doctor ;  would  you  like  to  hear  some  of  my  medicines  ?' 
*  Oh  yes,  Mr.  Sydney.'  '  There  is  the  gentlejog,  a  pleasure  to 
take  it — the  Bull-dog,  for  more  serious  cases  —  Peter's  puke  — 
Heart's  dehght,  the  comfort  of  all  the  old  women  in  the  village — 
Rub-a-dub,  a  capital  embrocation  —  Dead-stop,  settles  the  matter 
at  once  —  Up-with-it-then  needs  no  explanation;  and  so  on. 
Now,  Annie  Kay,  give  Mrs.  Spratt  a  bottle  of  Rub-a-dub  ;  and  to 
Mr.  Coles  a  dose  of  Dead-stop  and  twenty  drops  of  laudanum.' 

"'This  is  the  house  to  be  ill  in,'  turning  to  us;  'indeed  every- 
body who  comes  is  expected  to  take  a  little  something ;  I  consider 
it  a  delicate  compliment  when  my  guests  have  a  slight  illness  here. 
We  have  contrivances  for  everything.  Have  you  seen  my  patent 
armour  ?  No  ?  Annie  Kay  bring  my  patent  armour.  Now,  look 
here :  if  you  have  a  stiff-neck  or  swelled-face,  here  is  this  sweet 
case  of  tin  filled  with  hot  water,  and  covered  with  flannel,  to  put 
round  your  neck,  and  you  are  well  directly.  Likewise,  a  patent 
tin  shoulder,  in  ease  of  rheumatism.  There  you  see  a  stomach- 
tin,  the  greatest  comfort  in  life  ;  and  lastly,  here  is  a  tin  slipper, 
to  be  filled  with  hot  water,  which  you  can  sit  with  in  the  drawing- 
room,  should  you  come  in  chilled,  without  Avetting  your  feet 
Come  and  see  my  apothecary's  shop.' 

"  We  all  went  doAvn  stairs,  and  entered  a  room  filled  entirely  on 
one  side  with  medicines,  and.  on  the  other  Avith  every  description 
of  groceries  and   household  or  agricultural  nec^essaries ;    in  thf 


L'6  LOBSTER   SAUCE. 

centre,  a  large  cliest,  forming  a  table,  and  divided  into  compart- 
ments for  soap,  candles,  salt,  and  sugar. 

"  *  Here  you  see,'  said  he,  '  every  human  want  before  you : — 

" '  Man  wants  but  little  here  below, 

As  beef,  veal,  mutton,  pork,  lamb,  venison  show ;' 

spreading  out  his  arms  to  exhibit  everything,  and  laughing." 

Sydney  Smith  wrote  a  great  deal  about  prisons  and  prisoners, 
crimes  and  penalties,  and  justice's  justice.  It  is  of  positive  value 
that  we  have  this  account  of  his  own  management  in  matters  of 
rural  police  as  a  Justice  of  the  Peace : — 

"  lie  set  vigorously  to  work  to  study  Blackstone,  and  made 
himself  master  of  as  much  law  as  possible,  instead  of  blundering 
on,  as  many  of  his  neighbours  were  content  to  do.  Partly  by  this 
knowledge,  partly  by  his  good-humour,  he  gained  a  considerable 
influence  in  the  quorum,  which  used  to  meet  once  a  fortnight  at 
the  little  inn,  called  the  Lobster-house ;  and  the  people  used  to 
say  they  were  '  going  to  get  a  little  of  Mr.  Smith's  lobster-sauce.* 
By  dint  of  his  powerful  voice,  and  a  little  wooden  hammer,  he 
prevailed  on  Bob  and  Betty  to  speak  one  at  a  time ;  he  always 
tried,  and  often  succeeded,  in  turning  foes  into  friends.  Having  a 
horror  of  the  Game  laws,  then  in  full  force,  and  knowing,  as  he 
states  in  his  speech  on  the  Reform  Bill,  that  for  every  ten  pheas- 
ants which  fluttered  in  the  wood  one  English  peasant  was  rotting 
in  jail,  he  was  always  secretly  on  the  side  of  the  poacher  (much 
to  the  indignation  of  his  fellow-magistrates,  who  in  a  poacher  saw 
a  monster  of  iniquity),  and  always  contrived,  if  possible,  to  let 
him  escape,  rather  than  commit  him  to  jail,  with  the  certainty  of 
his  returning  to  the  world  an  accomplished  villain.  He  endeav 
oured  to  avoid  exercising  his  function  as  magistrate  in  his  own 
village  when  possible,  as  he  wished  to  be  at  peace  with  all  hia 
parishioners. 

"  Young  delinquents  he  never  could  bear  to  commit ;  but  read 
them  a  severe  lecture,  and  in  extreme  cases  called  out,  'Johu 


VISITS    FRANCE.  5T 

bring  me  my  prioate  galloivs  P  which  infaUibly  brought  tlie  little 
urchins  weeping  on  their  knees,  and,  '  Oh !  for  God's  sake,  your 
honour,  pray  forgive  us  !'  and  his  honour  used  graciously  to  pardorv 
them  for  tliis  time,  and  delay  the  arrival  of  the  private  gallows^ 
and  seldom  had  occasion  ta  repeat  the  threat."* 

Such  was  the  life  at  Fcston,  the  poverty  of  a  scholar  and  a  coun- 
try clergyman,  suj)ported  by  self-respect.  I  lis  independence  led 
him  to  make  many  sacrifices,  but  he  had  no  hesitation  in  honour- 
ably accepting  a  favour.  lie  received  a  hundred  a  year  from  his 
brother  Robert,  to  support  his  son  Douglas  at  Westminster  school ; 
but  "Aunt  Mary,"  an  old  lady,  dying  not  long  after,  and  unexpect- 
edly leaving  liim  a  moderate  legacy,  lie  at  once  released  liis  brother 
from  the  obligation.!  Other  accessions  of  prosperity  followed,  those 
affluent  rills  which  the  river  is  sure  to  meet  with  if  its  course  be 
Igng  continued.  The  neighbouring  living  of  Londesborough,  va- 
cant for  a  short  time,  was  added  to  his  resources  by  the  Earl  of 
Carlisle,  in  1825,  which  enabled  him  to  visit  Paris  the  next  year. 

The  tliree  weeks'  journey,  as  it  is  recorded  in  daily  letters 
to  Mrs.  Sydney  Smith,  supplies  one  of  the  most  delightful  and 
amusing  portions  of  his  always  profitable  and  entertaining  corres- 
pondence. It  is  full  of  the  novelty,  the  gusto  and  enjoyment  of 
the  Englishman's  or  American's  first  pleasant  impressions  of  the 
Continent,  when  everything  appears  gayer,  brighter,  better  than 
ever  before,  and  the  senses  are  feasted  by  the  brilliant  theatrical 
display.  Sydney  Smith  had  a  happy  tem])erment,  never  above 
being  surprised  and  delighted.  From  the  moment  of  his  crossing 
the  channel  his  latent  Gallic  blood  is  all  of  a  tingle.  Calais  is  full 
of  fine  sensations.     The  bedroom  at  Dessein's  is  superb,  and  so  is 

*  Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  150. 

t  To  the  Countess  Grey,  Foston,  Nov.  21,  1821  : — "An  old  aunt  has  died 
and  left  me  an  estate  in  London  ;  this  puts  me  a  little  at  mA'  ease,  and  will, 
in  some  degree  save  me  from  the  hitherto  necessary,  hut  unpleasant  practice 
of  making  sixpence  perform  the  functions  and  assume  the  importance  of  a 
shilling. 

"Partof  my  little  estate  is  the  Guildhall  Coffee-house,  in  King  street,  Cheap 
side.     I  mean  to  give  a  ball  there.     Will  you  come  V 


58  FIRST   IMPRESSIONS. 

the  dinner.  "I  w«h  you  could  see  me,"  he  writes,  witli  a  hus- 
band's and  a  chikT .  delight,  to  Mrs.  Sydney,  "  with  my  vrood  fire 
and  my  little  bed-room  and  fine  sitting-room."  The  streets  please 
him  "  exceedingly."  Calais  "  is  quite  another  world,  and  full  of  the 
greatest  entertainment."  As  for  the  propriety  and  civility  of  the 
people,  "I  have  not  seen,"  he  says,  "a  cobbler  Avho  is  not  better 
bred  than  an  English  gentleman."  Everything  is  better  than  in 
En"-land.  The  tea  is  better,  the  cookery  "  admirable ;"  and  after 
a  day's  surfeit  on  the  raree  show,  he  throws  himself  to  profound 
slumber  "on  a  charming  bed."  One  thing  only  is  wanting — the 
presence  of  Mrs.  Sydney  and  the  family.  They  are  well  re- 
membered. "  You  shall  all  see  France ;  I  am  resolved  upon  that ;'" 
and  again,  "I  most  sincerely  hope,  one  day  or  another,  to  conduct 
you  all  over  it;  the  thought  of  doing  so  is  one  of  my  greatest 
pleasures  in  travelling."  Paris,  at  which  he  arrives  in  a  day  or 
two,  is  great,  but  perhaps  not  quite  equal  to  Calais.  Under  the  in- 
fluence of  those  rose-coloured  first  impi-essions,  a  hovel  at  the  sea- 
board rivals  a  palace  at  Versailles,  and  a  signboard  a  mastcrjiiece 
at  the  Louvre.  How  many  thousand  Americans  have  been  so  over- 
come, on  arriving  at  Havre,  after  a  sea-voyage,  by  the  j-aree  show, 
and  how  human,  caustic,  witty,  Sydney  Smith  appears  in  writing 
down  all  this  nonsensical  delusion  —  this  cai)ital  trick  of  the  Gallic 
puppets  and  scenery.  At  Paris  we  see  the  same  process.  Sydney 
takes  lodgings  in  the  Rue  St.  Honore : — "  My  sitting-room  is  su- 
perb; my  bed-room,  close  to  it,  very  good;  there  is  a  balcony 
which  looks  upon  the  street.  *  *  I  am  exceedingly  pleased 
with  everything  I  have  seen  at  the  hotel,  and  it  will  be,  1  think, 
[to  Mrs.  Sydney]  here  we  shall  lodge."  Rather  too  fast  this.  The 
next  letter  has  an  amendment,  with  an  apology  for  undue  haste  in 
locating  the  future  air-castle — "of  course,  my  opinions,  from  my 
imperfect  information,  are  likely  to  change  every  day;  but  at  pres- 
ent I  am  inclined  to  think  that  I  ought  to  have  gone,  and  that  we 
will  go,  to  the  r.oulevards."  Then  comes  a  course  of  dinners,  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Holland  family ;  talk,  gossip,  and  visits.     The 


CELEBRITIES.  59 

wonder  becomes  less  wontlerful,  and  admiration,  still  kept  up,  i;s 
here  and  there  chilled  bj  criticism.  First  impressions  need  re- 
vision. A  confession  of  the  dinner  table  has  a  wider  application 
out-of-doors  than  its  admirable  individual  lessons  within.  "  I  dined 
with  Lord  Holland;  there  was  at  table  Barras,  the  Ex-Director, 
in  whose  countenance  I  immediately  discovered  all  the  signs  of 
blood  and  cruelty  which  distinguished  his  conduct.  I  found  out, 
however,  at  the  end  of  dinner,  that  it  was  not  Barras,  but  M.  de 
Barente,  an  historian  and  man  of  letters,  who,  I  believe,  has  never 
killed  anything  greater  than  a  flea."  Sir  Sidney  Smith,  the  Ad- 
miral, Avas  then  in  Paris,  and  there  is  some  pleasant  confusion  be- 
tween the  two  celebrities.  The  clerical  Sydney  meets  Talleyrand, 
Humboldt  and  Cuvicr ;  sees  Mars  and  Talma  at  the  theatre,  at- 
tends the  opera;  finds  Charles  X.  growing  very  old  since  he  dined 
with  him  at  the  Duke  of  Buccleugh's,  in  Scotland,  and  acting  very 
foolishly  in  his  government,  which  leads  to  the  prophecy,  soon  to 
be  fulfilled,  that  "if  this  man  lives,  another  revolution  is  inevit- 
able." The  local  pictures  are  exquisite.  "It  is  curious  to  see  in 
what  little  apartments  a  French  savant  lives ;  you  find  him  at  his 
books,  covered  with  snuflT,  with  a  little  dog  that  bites  your  legs." 
"The  Parisians  are  very  fond  of  adorning  their  public  fountains: 
sometimes  Avater  pours  forth  fi'om  a  rock,  sometimes  trickles  from 
the  jaAvs  of  a  serpent.  The  dull  and  prosaic  English  turn  a  brass 
cock  or  pull  out  a  plug.  What  a  nation !"  He  finally  leaves 
France,  having  purchased  for  himself  the  coat-of-arms  of  a  French 
peer,  on  a  seal,  Avhich  took  his  fancy,  as  he  professed,  for  family 
use,*  a  "  Cuisinier  Bourgeois,"  and  some  rolls  of  French  paper,  to 

*  Smith  wns  fond  of  joking  on  tliis  subject,  as  on  nil  others,  for  that  mat- 
ter. Lfidy  Holland  has  the  fo!lowin<r  anecdote  of  Combe  Elorey,  some  years 
later: — "He  v.-as  writinjj^  one  niominp  in  his  i'iivourite  bay-window,  when  a 
pompous  little  man,  in  rusty  black,  was  ushered  in.  'May  I  ask  what  pro- 
cures me  the  honour  of  this  A'islt?'  said  my  father.  'Oh,'  said  the  little  man, 
*I  am  compounding  a  history  of  the  dislinp:uishcd  families  in  Somersetsliire, 
and  have  called  to  obtain  tlie  Smitli  arms.'  '  I  regret,  sir,'  said  my  father, 
'nottole  able  to  contribute  to  so  valuable  a  work ;  but  the  Smiths  nevci 
had  any  arms,  and  have  invariably  sealed  their  letters  with  their  thumbs.'  " 


60  BRISTOL. 

jidd  a  cheap  magnificence  to  the  humble  Foston.  So  closed  this 
charming  episode  in  the  life  of  the  north  country  liectoi*.  It  may 
be  here  added  that  Sydney  Smith  did  carry  out  his  good  intention 
of  taking  Mrs.  Sydney  to  Paris.  The  visit  came  off  in  the  autumn 
of  1835.  Dessein's  hotel,  at  Calais,  was  still  magnificent;  Rouen 
afforded  a  glowing  sensation  ;  gentlemen  and  ladies  in  blouses  and 
caps  were  as  common  on  the  streets  as  before ;  the  cookery  of 
Pai-is  had  a  nicer  appreciation  from  a  palate  which  had  been  much 
cultivated  by  London  dmners  in  the  interval : — "  I  shall  not  easily," 
he  writes  to  Lady  Grey,  "forget  a  matelote  at  the  Rocher  de 
Cancale  and  almond  tart  at  Montreuil,  or  a  poulet  a  la  Tartare,  at 
Grignon's.  These  are  impressions  which  no  change  in  future  life 
can  obliterate."*  Sydney  Smith  crossed  tlie  channel  once  more  in 
1837,  to  visit  Holland,  but  the  gout  was  thcni  the  companion  of  his 
journey,  and  the  rose-coloured  atmosphere  had  vanished.  Worldly 
prosperity  had  advanced,  but  youth  had  receded. 

In  the  beginning  of  1828,  his  youngest  daughter  was  mar- 
ried at  York,  and  in  the  same  month  of  January,  he  received 
the  prebendal  stall  at  Bristol,  intelligence  of  whicli  was  grace- 
fully communicated  to  him  by  Lady  Lyndhurst.  Thither  he 
at  once  removed,  and  inaugurated  his  labours  by  preaching  a 
sermon  befoi-e  the  startled  mayor  and  corporation,  in  the  Ca- 
thedral, on  the  fifth  of  November,  Guy  Faux's  day,  in  support  of 
relio'ious  toleration,   particularly  in    reference  to  the   Catholics.f 

*  Sydney  Smith  was  not  an  epicure,  in  the  vulgar  sense  of  tlie  word ;  but 
he  was  undoubtedly  something  of  the  gourmet.  Ho  knew  the  value  of  flavoura 
and  sauces  to  life.  He  seasoned  his  curate's  dish  of  potatoes,  on  Salisbury 
Plain,  with  ketchup ;  studied,  as  we  see,  the  mysteries  of  taste  in  Paris,  and 
on  one  occasion  (recorded  by  Dyce,  iu  the  Table  Talk  of  Roger,))  ro8e  in  a 
bravura  of  fancy  to  the  declaration  that  "  Jue  idea  of  heavcji  was  eating  foie 
gras  to  the  sound  of  trumpets  i"  Smith  wrote  well  on  temperance,  and 
practised  it.  Fine  sayings  like  these,  however,  the  immortal  salad  receipt, 
and  records  of  innumerable  "dinings  out,"  in  the  Memoirs  and  Letters,  will 
render  his  memory  fragrant  in  the  traditions  of  gastronomy. 

t  He  thus  mentions  it  in  a  letter  to  Lord  Holland,  Bristol,  Nov.  5,  1828  : — 
"My  dp*.rLord  Holland,  To-day  I  have  preached  an  honest  surmoa  fSth 


CANON    OF   ST.    PAUL'S.  61 

It  is  published  in  his  works,  and  remains  a  plain,  siiiiple,  sin- 
cere assertion  in  the  words  of  its  title,  of  "  Those  Rules  of  Chris- 
tian Charity,  by  wliich  our  Opinions  of  other  Sects  should  be 
formed."  The  Bristol  preferment  brought  with  it  a  living,  and 
Foston-le-CIay  was  exchanged  for  the  more  euphonious  Combe 
Florey,  situated  in  a  scene  of  natural  beauty,  near  Taunton ; 
in  Smith's  own  description,  "  a  most  parsonic  parsonage,  like  those 
described  in  novels."  Tliis  increase  of  prosperity  was  darkened  by 
the  death  of  his  son  Douglas,  in  1829 — a  sorrow  which  accompanied 
the  father  through  life.  In  his  note  book  of  the  tune,  he  writes, 
"April  14th,  My  beloved  son  Douglas  died,  aged  twenty-four. 
Alas!  alas!"  And  afterward:  "  So  ends  this  year  of  my  life  —  a 
year  of  sorrow,  from  the  loss  of  my  beloved  son  Douglas  —  the  first 
great  misfortune  of  my  life,  and  one  which  I  shall  never  forget." 
Lady  Holland  adds  the  touching  trait,  "  in  his  last  hours  he  often 
called  his  youngest  son  by  the  name  of  Douglas." 

A  year  after,  his  friend  Lord  Grey  having  become  minister, 
Sydney  Smith's  cathedral  stall  at  Bristol  was  exchanged  for  a 
similar  but  more  profitable  post  in  London,  and  he  became  Canon 
Residentiary  of  St.  Paul's.*  Combe  Florey  he  still  continued  to 
hold,  and  thus,  between  town  and  country,  "  dining  with  the  rich 
in  London,  and  physicking  the  poor  in  the  country,  passing  from 
the  sauces  of  Dives  to  the  sores  of  Lazarus,"!  he  continued  his 
clerical  career  through  life. 

of  November]  before  the  Mayor  and  Corporation,  in  the  Cathedral — the 
most  protectant  Corporation  in  Ens;hxnd !  They  stared  at  me  witli  all  their 
eyes.     Several  of  them  could  not  keep  tlie  turtle  on  their  stomachs." 

*  The  following  letter  to  his  friend,  Mrs.  Mej-nell,  records  the  event : — 

"Saville  Row,  September,  1831. 

"  My  Dear  G.,  I  am  just  stepping  into  the  carriage  to  be  installed  by  the 
Bishop,  but  can  not  lose  a  post  in  thanking  you.  It  is,  I  believe,  a  very  good 
thing,  and  puts  me  at  my  case  for  life.  I  asked  for  nothing — never  did  any 
thing  shabby  to  procure  preferment.  These  are  pleasing  recollections.  My 
pleasure  is  greatly  increased  by  the  congratulations  of  good  and  excellent 
friends  like  yourself.     God  bless  you !  "  Sydney  Smith." 

1  Lette*  to  M.  Eng?ne  Robin.     Memoir,  ii.  497. 


62  COUNTRY   PARISHIONERS. 

Nor  were  his  duties  at  either  place  neglected.  He  became  a 
most  zealous  guardian  of  the  church  property  and  affairs  at  St. 
Paul's,  superintending  building  accounts  and  expenses  toilfuUy  and 
skilfully ;  and  j  reaching  in  his  turn,  to  the  close  of  his  life,  Avith 
dignity  and  eloquence ;  while  in  the  summer  months,  at  Combe 
Florey,  his  heart  expanded  among  his  parishioners,  whom  he  at- 
tended with  faithful  tenderness ;  entering  into  their  circumstances, 
and,  what  is  so  rare  in  the  world  with  persons  of  superior  station, 
surveying,  Avith  heartfelt  sympathy,  the  cares  and  enjoyments  of 
life  on  a  lower  level.  Hodge  had  always,  in  Sydney  Smith,  a 
friend,  who  understood  him,  and  when  it  was  threatened  that 
Hodge's  beer  would  be  cut  off  by  meddling  licensers,  or  Hodge  was 
in  danger  from  the  game  laws,  he  had,  in  his  clerical  visiter,  a  use- 
ful protector.  Sydney  Smith's  Advice  to  Parishioners  is  worthy 
of  the  philanthropy,  humanity,  and  good-humoured  shrewdness  of 
Poor  Richard.  For  Franklin,  indeed.  Smith  entertained  a  gener- 
ous admiration,  and  the  manners  of  the  two  sages  were,  in  many 
things,  not  unlike. 

To  the  domestic  sketches  of  Foston,  must  be  added,  as  a  pend- 
ant, this  pencilling,  by  Lady  Holland,  of  "glorified"  Combe 
Florey : — "  I  long  to  give  some  sketches  of  these  breakfasts,  and 
the  mode  of  life  at  Combe  Florey,  where  thei'e  were  often  as- 
sembled guests  that  would  have  made  any  table  agreeable  any- 
where ;  but  it  would  be  difficult  to  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  the 
beauty,  gayety,  and  happiness  of  the  scene  in  which  they  took 
place,  or  the  charm  that  he  infused  into  the  society  assembled 
round  his  breakfast-table.  The  room,  an  oblong,  was,  as  I  have 
already  described,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  books,  and  ended 
in  a  bay-window,  opening  into  the  garden :  not  brown,  dark,  dull- 
looking  volumes,  but  all  in  the  brightest  bindings  ;  for  he  carried 
his  system  of  furnishing  for  gayety  even  to  tbe  dress  of  his  books. 

"  He  would  come  down  into  this  long,  low  room  in  the  morning 
like  a  '  giant  refreshed  to  run  his  course,'  bright  and  happy  as  the 
scene  around  him.     'Thank  God  for  Combe  Florey!'  he  wov.ld 


GLORIFIED    COMBE  FLORE Y.  63 

exclaim,  throwing  himself  in  his  red  arm-chair,  and  looking  around,- 
«I  Icel  like  a  bridegroom  in  the  honeymoon.'  And  in  truth  I 
doubt  it"  ever  bridegroom  felt  so  joyous,  or  at  least  made  others 
feel  so  joyous,  as  he  did  on  these  occasions.  '  Ring  the  bell, 
Saba ;'  the  usual  refrain,  by-the-by,  in  every  pause,  for  he  con- 
trived to  keep  every  body  actively  employed  around  hlra,  and  no- 
body ever  objected  to  be  so  employed.  '  Ring  the  bell,  Saba.'  En- 
ter the  servant,  D .     '  D ,  glorify  the  room.'     This  meant 

that  the  tlu-ee  Venetian  windows  of  the  bay  were  to  be  flung  open^ 
displaying  the  garden  on  every  side,  and  letting  in  a  blaze  of  sun- 
shine and  flowers.     D glorifies  the   room  with  the  utmost 

gravity,  and  departs.    '  You  would  not  believe  it,'  he  said,  '  to  look 

at  him  now,  but  D is  a  reformed  Quaker.     Yes,  he  quaked, 

or  did  quake  ;  his  brother  quakes  still :  but  D is  now  thorough- 
ly orthodox.    I  should  not  like  to  be  a  Dissenter  in  his  way ;  he  is 

to  be  one  of  my  vergers  at  St.  Paul's  some  day.     Lady  B 

calls  them  my  virgins.  She  asked  me  the  other  day,  '  Pray,  Mr. 
Smith,  is  it  true  that  you  walk  doAvn  St.  Paul's  with  three  virgins 
holding  silver  pokers  before  you  ?'  I  shook  my  head,  and  looked 
very  grave,  and  bid  her  come  and  see.  Some  enemy  of  the  Church, 
some  Dissenter,  had  clearly  been  misleading  her.' 

"  '  There  now,'  sitting  down  at  the  breakfast-table,  '  take  a  lesson 
of  economy.  You  never  breakfasted  in  a  parsonage  before,  did  you  ? 
There,  you  see  my  china  is  all  wliite,  so  if  broken  can  always  be 
renewed ;  the  same  with  my  plates  at  dinner :  did  you  observe  my 
plates  ?  every  one  a  diiferent  pattern,  some  of  them  sweet  articles  ; 
it  was  a  pleasure  to  dine  upon  such  a  plate  as  I  had  last  night.  It 
is  true,  Mrs.  Sydney,  who  is  a  great  herald,  is  shocked  because 
some  of  them  have  the  arms  of  a  royal  duke  or  a  knight  of  the 
garter  on  them,  but  that  does  not  signify  to  me.  My  plan  is  to 
go  into  a  china  shop  and  bid  them  show  me  every  plate  they 
have  which,  does  not  cost  more  than  half  a  crown :,  you  see  the 
result.' " 

Smith's  London  life,  at  his  residence  in  Charles  street,  ajipears 


61  LONDON    RESIDENCr:. 

to  have  been  aiteuded  by  "  all  that  shouhl  accoiiipaiiy  old  age. 
honour,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends,"  but  some  f'u'.es,  alas,  were 
missing.  Mackintosh,  whose  memory  he  fondly  cherished,  was  no 
longer  living,  and  others  had  fallen  in  thi^  race,  lie  .'^'lincnl,  iiowcver, 
the  alliance  of  Dr.  Holland,*  who  married  his  daughter  Saba,  in 
1831,  and  new  faces  came  to  cheer  him  in  liis  home-circle. 

The  fifteen  years  assigned  to  the  Canon  of  St.  Paul's,  bc^rc  rieli 
fruits  of  his  preceding  culture  and  discipline.  lie  had  cessed 
contributing  to  the  Edinburgh  Review,  having  penned  his  last 
iirticle  —  it  was  on  the  Catholic  Question  —  in  1827.  He  now 
thought  it  decorous  that  a  Church  dignitary  should  appear  openly 
to  the  world  in  his  writings,  and  not  shelter  himself  under  the 
anonymous.  His  pen,  however,  was  not  idle,  and  he  stood  forth 
still,  as  ever,  in  pamphlets  and  letters  to  the  newspapers,  a 
champion  of  liberal  interests,  and  of  the  rights  of  his  order. 

Having  been  thrown,  upon  his  first  arrival  at  Bristol,  in  1830,  into 
the  midst  of  the  violent  agitations  of  the  times,  he  met  the  crisis 
by  his  practical  earnest  advice  to  the  uninstructed  laboring  classes, 
and  his  more  resolute  warnings  to  the  exclusive  politicians.  To 
enlighten  the  poor  on  the  value  of  machinery,  which  they  were 
bent  upon  destroying,  he  pubhshed  seversd  cheap  tracts,  entitled 
"  Letters  to  Swing  ;"  while  at  county  Reform  meetings  at  Taunton, 
he  levelled  several  most  vigorous  speeches  at  the  pressing  evils  of 
the  representative  system.  In  one  of  these  occurs  his  now  world 
renowned  introduction  of  Mrs.  Partington. 

The  most  notable  of  aU  Sydney  Smith's  writings  on  the  affairs 
of  tlie  Establishment,  were  his  three  Letters  addressed  to  Arch- 
deacon Singleton,  the  first  of  which  appeared  in  1837,  and  the 

*  Sir  Henry  lIoHand,  eminent  for  his  literary  and  philosophical,  as  well  as 
professional  attainments.  He  to(ik  his  degree  of  M.  I),  at  Edinburgh,  in  ISO'J. 
In  the  summer  of  ISIO  he  visited  leeland,  in  company  with  Sir  George  IMac- 
kenisie,  to  whose  book  of  travels  in  the  island  he  contributed  the  Preliminary 
Dissertation  and  the  article  on  Education  and  Literature.  His  "  Travels  in 
the  Ionian  Isles,  Albania,  Thessaly,  Macedonia,  &c.,  during  the  years  1812 
and  1813,"  were  received  with  fivour  on  tlieir  publication  in  1813. 


CATHEDRAL   LETTERS.  65 

others  at  intervals  of  al)out  a  year.  They  relate  to  the  aflah'S  of 
fhe  Whig  Ecclesiastical  Commission,  then  sitting,  and  chiefly  to  its 
attempted  invasions  of  Cathedral  endowments  and  patronage.  It 
was  proposed,  among  otiier  things,  to  assist  tlie  revenues  of  the 
poorer  clergy,  by  taking  from  a  number  of  the  larger  benefices 
pecuniary  advantages,  to  form  a  fund  for  the  augmentation  of 
small  livings.  The  prebendal  stalls  of  St.  Paul's,  in  particular, 
were  exposed  to  the  shears  of  the  projected  bill.  They  were  to 
be  diminished  in  number,  and  their  emoluments  curtailed.  Sydney 
Smith  came  forth  resolutely  to  the  rescue.  As  it  was  a  commis- 
sion of  Bishops  in  which  Deans  and  Chapters  were  not  repre- 
sented, and  as  Episcopal  revenues  were  not  to  be  touched,  the 
Bishops  were  made  to  feel  the  full  force  of  his  wit  and  argument. 
There  is  some  very  plain  talk  addressed  to  the  Bishop  of  London, 
the  learned  Blomfield,  whose  passion  for  government  is  made  to 
appear  a  virtue  in  excess.  "  Here  it  is,"  Smith  exclaims,  citing  a 
charge  of  rashness  against  the  Bishop's  classical  emendations, 
"  qualis  ah  incepto.  He  begins  with  ^Eschylus,  and  ends  with  the 
Church  of  England ;  begins  with  profane,  and  ends  with  holy  in- 
novations—  scratching  out  old  readings  which  every  commentator 
had  sanctioned,  abolishing  ecclesiastical  dignities  which  every  re- 
former had  spared ;  thrusting  an  anapa2st  into  a  verse  which  will  not 
bear  it ;  and  intruding  a  Canon  into  a  Cathedral  which  does  not  want 
it."  The  handling  of  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  Dr.  IMonk,  who 
threw  into  the  discussion  an  attack  upon  Sydney  Smith,  as  "  a  scof- 
fer and  jester,"  is  excessively  severe,  retorting  personality  for  per- 
sonality. There  is  a  very  neat  example  of  mingled  satire  and  eulo- 
gy in  a  page  on  Lord  Melbourne.  In  these  papers,  too,  occurs  the 
celebrated  description  of  Lord  John  Russell :  "  There  is  not  a  better 
man  in  England ;  but  his  worst  failure  is,  that  he  is  utterly  ignor- 
ant of  all  moral  fear ;  there  is  nothing  he  would  not  undertake. 
I  believe,  he  would  perform  the  operation  for  the  stone — buiW 
St.  Peters — or  assume  (with  or  without  ten  minutes'  notice),  tl--<». 
command  of  the  Channel  Fh^ct ;  and  no  one  would  discover,  bv 


66  CHAPTEE  RIGHTS. 

his  manner,  that  the  patient  had  died — the  Church  tumbled  down 
—  and  the  Channel  Fleet  been  knocked  to  atoms." 

The  main  argument  of  the  Letters,  which  shows  the  Canon 
something  of  a  conservative  in  the  plurality  interest,  is  that  the 
reform  would  be  unjust  and  injui'ious  to  the  Church.  It  Avould 
interfere  with  vested  riglits,  and,  though  it  might  tend  to  equalize 
tlie  incomes  of  the  clergy,  the  majority  of  them  would  remain  very 
small  —  the  individual  gain  would  be  trifling,  while  the  great  pecu- 
niary and  social  I'ewards  of  the  Church  would  be  destroj'cd.  The 
English  Establishment,  he  argued,  is,  upon  the  whole,  poor,  but  its 
character  is  maintained  in  a  countiy  where  wealth  is  essential  to 
secure  respect  by  its  high  prizes.  As  in  the  profession  of  the  bar, 
many  are  induced  to  enter  it,  and  encounter  every  early  privation 
with  the  hope  of  attaining  its  splendid  positions  ;  which  also  attract 
many  persons  of  independent  incomes,  who  thus  supply  the  gen- 
eral deficiency  of  means.  Destroy  these  glittering  emoluments, 
and  the  ground  will  be  occupied  by  inferior  men,  low,  badly  edu- 
cated, and  fanatical.  "  You  will  have  a  set  of  ranting,  raving 
Pastors,  who  will  wage  war  against  all  the  innocent  pleasures  of 
life,  vie  with  each  other  in  extravagance  of  zeal,  and  plague  your 
heart  out  with  their  nonsense  and  absurdity :  cribbage  must  be 
played  in  caverns,  and  sixpenny  whist  take  refuge  in  the  howling 
wilderness.  In  this  way  Ioav  men,  doomed  to  hopeless  poverty, 
and  galled  by  contempt,  will  endeavour  to  force  themselves  into 
station  and  signihcanee." 

The  Chapter  rights  were  gallantly  and  successfully  defended 
from  behind  the  entrenchments  of  St.  Paul's,  with  many  a  dashing 
sortie  and  skirmish  —  without  any  particular  delicacy  as  to  the 
weapon  or  its  stroke — with  the  Bishops.  Tliat  his  friends,  the 
'Whigs,  suffered  from  the  force  of  his  logic  was  but  a  proof  of  his 
independent  character.  It  Avas  no  desertion  of  his  political  prin- 
ciples, but  evidence  of  his  constancy  to  what  he  had  always  re- 
garded as  the  practical  welfare  of  the  Church;  while  he  had, 
shortly  after,  an  opportunity  of  proving  to  the  world  how  little  he 


LIVING   OF   EDMONTON.  67 

was  guided,  in  this  defence,  by  his  pi'ivate  pecuniary  interests.  A 
perquisite  of  the  Chapter  of  St.  Paul's,  tlie  living  of  Edmonton, 
worth  seven  hundred  pounds  a  year,  fell  to  his  shai'e,  on  the  death 
of  his  associate,  Mr.  Tate.  According  to  the  usage  in  such  mat- 
ters, it  was  expected  that  he  would  turn  the  emolument  to  his  own 
advantage.  He  generously  conferred  the  whole  on  the  son  of  the 
late  incumbent.  The  incident  is  so  characteristically  narrated  by 
him,  in  a  letter  addressed  to  his  wife,  that  it  would  be  injustice  to 
the  reader  not  to  present  the  scene  in  his  own  words :  "  I  went 
over,  yesterday,  to  the  Tates  at  Edmonton.  The  family  consists 
of  three  dehcate  daughters,  an  aunt,  the  old  lady,  and  her  son, 
then  curate  of  Edmonton  ;  the  old  lady  was  in  bed.  I  found  there 
a  physician,  an  old  friend  of  Tate's,  attending  them  from  friend- 
ship, who  had  come  from  London  for  that  purpose.  They  were 
in  daily  expectation  of  being  turned  out  from  house  and  curacy. 
...  I  began  by  inquu'ing  the  character  of  their  servant ;  then 
turned  the  conversation  upon  their  affairs,  and  expressed  a  hope 
the  Chapter  might  ultimately  do  something  for  them.  I  then  said, 
*  It  is  my  duty  to  state  to  you  (they  were  all  assembled)  that  I 
have  given  away  the  hving  of  Edmonton ;  and  have  written  to 
our  Chapter  clerk  tliis  morning,  to  mention  the  person  to  whom  I 
have  given  it ;  and  I  must  also  tell  you,  that  I  am  sure  he  will 
appoint  his  curate.  (A  general  silence  and  dejection.)  It  is  a 
very  odd  coincidence,'  I  added,  '  that  the  gentleman  I  have  selected 
is  a  namesake  of  this  family ;  his  name  is  Tate.  Have  you  any 
relations  of  that  name  ?'  '  No,  we  have  not.'  '  And,  by  a  more 
singular  coincidence,  his  name  is  Thomas  Tate  ;  in  short,'  I  added, 
'  there  is  no  use  in  mincing  the  matter,  you  are  vicar  of  Edmonton.' 
They  all  burst  into  tears.  It  flung  me,  also,  into  a  great  agitation 
of  tears,  and  I  wept  'knd  groaned  for  a  long  time.  Then  I  rose, 
and  said  I  thought  it  was  very  hkely  to  end  in  their  keeping  a 
buggy,  at  which  we  all  laughed  as  violently. 

"  The  poor  old  lady,  who  was  sleeping  in  a  garret  because  she 
could  not  bear  to  enter  into  the  room  lately  inhabited   by  her 


68  THE   BALLOT. 

husband,  sent  for  me  and  kissed  me,  sobbing  /with  a  thousand 
emotions.  The  charitable  physician  wept  too.  ...  I  never  passed 
8o  romai-kable  a  morning,  nor  was  more  deeply  impressed  with 
the  sutrerings  of  human  life,  and  never  felt  more  thoroughly  the 
happiness  of  doing  good." 

A  pamphlet  on  the  Ballot  was  the  most  important  of  Sydney 
Smith's  later  productions.  It  appeared  in  1839,  when  the  subject 
was  much  agitated  by  the  hberals.  He  opposed  its  introduction 
with  his  usual  ingenuity  and  pertinacity  of  argument,  considering 
it  ineffective  in  reaching  the  evil,  interference  with  the  freedom 
of  voting,  it  was  set  forth  to  cure.  He  regards  it  as  inimical  to 
moral  courage,  a  foe  to  just  responsibility  and  good  example ; 
citing,  witli  unction,  a  reply  of  John  Randolph,  at  a  dinner-party 
in  London,  to  the  question  whether  bnllot  pi'evailed  in  his  state  of 
Virginia.  "  I  scarcely  believe,"  replied  the  American  orator,  "  we 
have  such  a  fool  in  all  Virginia,  as  to  mention,  even,  the  vote  by 
ballot ;  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  that  the  adoption  of  the  ballot 
would  make  any  nation  a  nation  of  scoundrels,  if  it  did  not  find 
them  so."  "John  Randolph,"  continues  Sydney  Smith,  "Avas 
right ;  he  felt  that  it  was  not  necessary  that  a  people  should  be 
false  in  order  to  be  free ;  universal  hypocrisy  would  be  the  conse- 
quence of  ballot ;  we  should  soon  say,  on  deliberation,  what  David 
only  asserted  in  his  haste,  that  all  men  toere  liars."  It  is  curious 
to  note  the  matter-of-ftxct  way  in  which  it  is  taken  for  granted, 
that  the  landlord  will,  in  some  way,  control  his  tenants.  In  Amer- 
ica, where  the  ballot,  though  generally  prevalent,  is  not  universal, 
he  asserts,  "  it  is  nearly  a  dead  letter ;  no  protection  is  wanted  :  if 
the  ballot  protects  any  one  it  is  the  master,  not  the  man."  One 
of  the  difficulties  urged,  in  the  use  of  the  ballot,  is  its  defeat  of 
a  reliable  system  of  registration,  by  which  contested  returns  might 
be  settled.  At  the  close  of  the  essay,  the  argument  of  which  rests, 
as  usual  with  him,  greatly  on  local  expediency,  he  expresses  his 
distrust  of  what  he  regarded  as  a  concomitant  of  the  measure  in 
England,  the  demand  for  universal  suffrage. 


PENNSYLVANIA   BONDS.  69 

The  occurrence  of  the  railway  disaster,  by  fire,  at  Versailles,  in 
1842,  when  a  number  of  lives  were  lost,  in  consequence  of  a  regu- 
lation by  which  the  passengers  were  locked  in  the  cars,  drew  forth 
fi-om  Smith  several  characteristic  letters  on  the  subject,  addressed 
to  The  Morning  Chronicle  and  Sir  Robert  Peel. 

The  year  1843  jn-oduccd  Sydney  Smith's  famous  Petition  to 
Congi'css,  and  Letters  on  Amei-ican  Debts.  The  failure  of  several 
States  in  the  midst  of  financial  embarrassments,  to  make  provision 
for  the  payment  of  interest  due  on  bonds,  with  whatever  extenu- 
ating circumstances  it  may  have  been  attended,  was  a  pressing 
evil.  Judged  by  the  lower  test  of  expediency,  it  was  a  political 
blunder.  The  delay,  fortunately,  was  soon  enough  terminated,  in 
most  of  the  cases,  to  ward  oif  the  severe  verdict  of  the  world 
which  would  have  attended  upon  persistance  in  the  neglect. 
Smith  was  the  holder  of  certain  Pennsylvania  Bonds.  He  missed 
his  semi-annual  interest  on  pay-day ;  heard  talk  of  the  ill  word 
''  repudiation,"  and  took  up  his  pen  in  illustration  of  the  sound  prin- 
ciples of  pecuniary  obligation  and  national  faith.  The  cause  was 
just,  and  his  wit  was  trenchant.  He  made  the  most  of  the  subject, 
as  he  had  a  right  to  do ;  indeed,  he  made  so  much  of  it,  that  the 
laugh  was  rather  turned  against  him,  when  it  was  found  over  how 
slight  a  personal  loss  he  had  contrived  to  raise  so  loud  a  storm  of  indig- 
nation. He  sold  his  shares  at  a  discount,  and  was  damaged  a  small 
matter  by  the  operation.  The  principle,  however,  was  the  same. 
If  the  "drab-coloured  men"  had  taken  but  two  pence  in  the  spirit  of 
robbery,  they  would  have  been  justly  exposed  to  the  vituperatives  of 
idl  the  languages  of  the  civilized  world.  Sydney  Smith's  extrava- 
gance of  statement  and  exaggerating  invective,  the  riot  of  his 
humour,  while  increasing  the  efliciency,  abated,  however,  from  the 
acerbity  of  his  denunciations.  As  to  the  principle  involved,  there 
could  be  but  one  opinion  for  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic ;  and  it  was 
generally  considered,  on  this  side,  that  Sydney  Smith's  Letters  did 
good  sei-vice.  In  other  days,  when  America  had  been  in  need  of 
English  opinion,  Sydney  Smith,  it  should  not  be  forgotten,  had 


70  A   SQUIB. 

stood  forth  her  resolute  eulogist  and  champion.     It  was  with  him 

that  the  very  complimentary  phrase  apphed  to  the  United  States, 

originated,  "  a  magnificent  spectacle  of  human  happiness."*      The 

entrance  of  the  demon  Repudiation  on  the  scene  disturbed  the 

show.t 

*  Article,  America,  Ed.  Eev.,  July,  1 824.    Letter  to  Jeffrey,  Nov.  23, 1818. 
t  There  is  a  stanza  in  an  amusing,  though  reckless,  English  squib  of  the 
time  on  the  topic,  introducing  Sydney  Smith  : — 

"a  new  song  to  an  old  tune. 
"  Yankee  Doodle  borrows  cash, 
Yankee  Doodle  spends  it. 
And  then  he  snaps  his  fingers  at 

The  jolly  flat  who  lends  it. 
Ask  him  when  he  means  to  pay, 

He  shows  no  hesitation, 
But  says  he'll  take  the  shortest  way 
And  that's  Repudiation ! 

Chorus:  Yankee  Doodle  borrows  cash,  &c. 

"Yankee  tows  that  every  State 

Is  free  and  independent : 
And  if  they  paid  each  other's  debts, 

There'd  never  be  an  end  on't. 
They  keep  distinct  till  "settling"  comes. 

And  then  throughout  the  nation 
They  all  become  "  United  States" 

To  preach  Repudiation  ! 

"Lending  cash  to  Illinois, 

Or  to  Pennsylvania, 
Florida,  or  Mississippi, 

Once  was  quite  a  mania. 
Of  all  the  States  'tis  hard  to  say 

Which  makes  the  proudest  show,  sirs. 
But  Yankee  seems  himself  to  like 

The  State  of  0-I-owe,  sirs. 

The  reverend  joker  of  St.  Pail's  Jl 

Don't  relish  much  their  plunder,  fl 

And  often  at  their  knavish  tricks 

Has  hurled  his  witty  thunder. 
But  Jonathan  by  nature  wears 

A  hide  of  toughest  leather, 
"Which  braves  the  sharpest-pointed  d&rts 

And  canons  put  together! 


XANTIPPE.  71 

The  Pennsylvania  bonds  supplied  a  frequent  theme  to  Sydney 
Smith,  in  his  conversations  and  letters,  grave  and  gay.  He  read 
the  American  papers,  and  found  himself  a  well-abused  man: 
"  The  Americans,  I  see,"  he  said,  "  call  me  a  Minor  Canon.  They 
are  abusing  me  dreadfully  to-day :  they  call  me  Xantippe ;  they 
might,  at  least,  have  known  my  sex :  and  they  say  I  am  eighty- 
four."  To  the  Countess  Grey,  he  writes :  "  There  is  nothing  in 
the  crimes  of  kings  worse  than  this  villainy  of  democracy."  To 
Mrs.  Grote :  "  My  bomb  has  fallen  very  successfully  in  America, 
and  the  list  of  killed  and  wounded  is  extensive.  I  have  several 
quires  of  paper  sent  me  every  day,  calling  me  monster,  thief, 
atheist,  deist,  etc.  Duff  Green  sent  me  three  pounds  of  cheese, 
and  a  Captain  Morgan  a  large  barrel  of  American  apples." 

A  Captain  Morgan  is  the  Captain  Morgan,  of  New  York,  late 
of  the  packet  ship  Southampton,  whose  genial  personal  qualities, 

"He  tells  'em  they  are  clapping  on 

Their  credit  quite  a  stopper. 
And  when  they  come  to  go  to  war 

They'll  never  raise  a  copper. 
If  that's  the  case,  they  coolly  say, 

Just  as  if  to  spite  us. 
They'd  better  stop  oar  dividends, 

And  hoard  'em  up  to  fight  us ! 

■'What's  the  use  of  moneyed  friends 

K  you  mustn't  bleed  'em  ? 
Ours,  I  guess,  says  Jonathan, 

The  country  is  of  freedom ! 
And  what  does  freedom  mean,  if  not 

To  whip  our  slaves  at  pleasure 
And  borrow  money  when  you  can, 

To  pay  it  at  your  leisure? 

"Great  and  free  Amerikee 

With  all  the  world  is  vying, 
That  she  the  "  land  of  promise"  is 

There's  surely  no  denying. 
But  be  it  known  henceforth  to  all, 

Who  hold  their  I.  0.  U.  sirs, 
A  Yankee  Doodle  promise  is 

A  Yankee  Doodle  do,  sirs  !" 


72  APPLES   FROM   A   SOLVENT   STATE. 

appreciated  by  many  Atlantic  travellers  and  intimtites  at  home, 
have  long  endeared  him  to  such  honourable  literary  and  artistic 
friends  and  acquaintances  abroad,  as  Dickens,  Thackeray,  LesUe 
and  his  brother-artists  of  the  Sketching  Club  of  London.  To 
Captain  Morgan  we  are  indebted  for  the  two  following  letters,  now 
first  published,  addressed  to  him  by  Sydney  Smith — touching  the 
apples  aforesaid,  and  American  obligations  generally.  The  first, 
which  we  also  present,  in  a  fac-simile  of  the  original,  is  dated  at 
the  writer's  London  residence,  in  December,  1843.  It  reads  :  "  Sir : 
I  am  much  obliged  by  your  present  of  Apples,  which  I  consider 
as  apples  of  Concord  not  discord.  I  have  no  longer  any  pecuniary 
interest  that  your  countrymen  should  pay  their  debts — but  as  a 
sincere  friend  to  America,  I  earnestly  hope  they  may  do  so." 
The  other  is  dated  Combe  Florey,  January  14,  1844:  "Sir:  I 
ehould  have  written  long  since  to  have  thanked  you  for  your 
Apples,  but  unfortunately  lost  your  address.  It  lately  occurred  to 
me,  that  I  could  find  you  by  means  of  our  friend,  Mr.  Bates.  The 
apples  have  been  eaten  with  universal  applause,  after  I  had  as- 
sured the  company  that  they  came  from  a  Solvent  State.  My 
opinion  (worth  something,  not  much),  is,  that  Pennsylvania  will 
not  pay.  I  heard  my  friend  Stokes  upon  the  subject,  but  his  facts 
and  his  arguments  led  me  to  conclusions  very  opposite  to  his  own. 
I  sincerely  hope  that  you  have  only  a  theoretical  interest  in  the 
subject." 

In  spite  of  skepticism,  the  apples  were  doubtless  eaten  with  good 
will.  Sydney  Smith,  though  tenacious  of  his  satire  and  his  jests, 
listened  with  interest  to  the  representations  of  Mr.  Edward 
Everett,  then  in  England,  and  read  with  satisfaction  the  fair-minded 
letter  published  by  Mr.  George  Ticknor  in  the  Boston  Daily  Ad- 
vertiser.* 

It  was  this  year,  1843,  which  brought  to  the  Canon  of  St.  Paul's, 
too  late  in  life  to  add  much  to  his  usefulness  or  enjoyments,  a  large 
increase  of  wealth.  His  brother  Courtenay  died  without  a  will, 
*  It  is  given  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  pp.  264-268. 


BREAKING   UP.  73 

and  Sydney,  at  the  age  of  seventy-two,  inlierited  :iiic  third  of  an 
estate  of  a  hundred  thousand  pounds. 

Sydney  Smith  had  now  arrived  at  that  period  of  life,  in  whicli 
in  general,  there  is  little  for  a  man  to  do  but  to  fold  his  robes  about 
him  and  leave  the  stage  with  decorum.  Though  retaining  his  fac- 
ulties to  the  last  with  unabated  mental  vigour,  the  premonitions  of 
disease  warned  him  of  the  grave.  "  I  am  going  slowly,"  he  writes 
to  a  friend  in  1836,  "  down  the  hill  of  life.  One  evil  in  old  age 
is,  that  as  your  time  is  come,  you  think  every  little  illness  is  the 
beginning  of  the  end.  When  a  man  expects  to  be  arrested,  every 
knock  at  the  door  is  an  alarm."  The  gout  paid  him  several  such 
domiciliary  visits  before  the  final  summons.  He  was  not  what  is 
called  a  martyr  to  the  disease,  but  he  felt  its  sting.  He  jests  on 
the  subject  in  his  correspondence  with  his  friend  and  fellow-victim, 
Sir  George  Philips,*  and  bears  up  bravely  under  the  infliction.  In 
the  history  of  suffering,  pain  has  been  no  unfrequent  stimulant  of 
wit.  The  season  before  liis  death  he  said  "  I  feel  so  weak,  both 
in  body  and  mind,  that  I  verily  believe,  if  the  knife  were  put  into  my 
hand,  I  should  not  have  strength  or  energy  enough  to  stick  it  into 
a  Dissenter."  Under  the  last  regimen  of  his  physician,  he  said  to 
his  friend  General  Fox,  "  Ah,  Charles !  I  wish  I  were  allowed 
even  the  whig  of  a  roasted  butterfly."  Such  things  had  once  set 
the  table  on  the  roar.     The  jest  cost  more  now. 

It  is  pleasant  to  note  how  kindly  the  old  humourist  carries 
himself  to  the  last  in  his  letters  to  his  female  friends.  The  novels 
of  Dickens,  for  which  he  had  a  genuine  appreciation,  were  among 
his  latest  enjoyments.     The  infirmities  of  age,  with  intermissions 

"  *  A  more  benevoicnv  man,"  says  Haydon,  in  his  Diary,  "  never  lived 
than  Sir  George  Philips."  He  advanced  five  imndred  guineas  to  the  artist 
for  his  picture  of  Christ  in  tlie  Garden.  Smith  visited  Philips  at  his  seat  near 
Manchester,  when  the  host  revelled  in  his  guest's  Iniinour.  "  He  was  inces- 
santly stimulating  him  to  attack  liim,"says  Lady  Holland,  "whicli  my  father 
certainly  did  most  vigorously  ;  yet  I  believe  no  one  present  enjoyed  tliese  at- 
tacks more  than  Sir  George  himself,  who  lauglied  at  them  almost  to  exhaus- 
tion."    Philips  died  in  1847,  at  the  age  of  ciglitv-one. 

4 


74  THE  END. 

of  comfort,  crept  steadily  on,  and  in  October,  1844,  a  last  attack, 
an  affection  of  water  on  the  chest,  consequent  on  disease  of  the 
heart,  seized  its  victim  in  the  country  at  Combe  Florey.  He  was 
removed  to  town,  was  attended  by  his  beloved  son-in-law,  Dr. 
Holland,  and  by  his  nurse,  Annie  Kay,  who  had  been  with  him 
eince  the  old  days  at  Foston.  Earl  Grey  sent  him  messages  of 
sympathy  from  his  own  death-bed.  In  one  of  his  last  hours  the 
wonted  fire  of  the  preacher  of  St.  Paul's  burst  forth  in  the  recita- 
tion of  a  toucliing  and  eloquent  passage  from  his  sermon  on 
Riches.  "  One  evening,"  his  daughter.  Lady  Plolland,  tells  us, 
"  when  the  room  was  half  darkened,  and  he  had  been  resting  long 
in  silence,  and  I  thought  him  asleep,  he  suddenly  burst  forth,  in  a 
voice  so  strong  and  full  that  it  startled  us  —  '"We  talk  of  human 
life  as  a  journey,  but  how  variously  is  that  journey  performed ! 
There  are  some  who  come  forth  girt,  and  shod,  and  mantled, 
to  walk  on  velvet  lawns  and  smooth  terraces,  where  eveiy  gale 
is  arrested,  and  every  beam  is  tempered.  There  are  others 
who  walk  on  the  Alpine  path  of  life,  against  driving  misery, 
and  through  stormy  sorrows,  over  sharp  afflictions  ;  walk  with 
bare  feet,  and  naked  breast,  jaded,  mangled,  and  chilled.' "  But 
these  inequalities  of  life  were  now  over.  He  had  arrived  at  the 
common  level  of  mortality.  The  end  had  come.  He  calmly 
met  death  the  22d  of  February,  1845.  His  remains  were  laid  in 
the  cemetery  of  Kensal  Green.  The  tomb  upon  which  his  epitaph 
is  written  has  also  an  inscription  to  the  memory  of  his  son  Douglas  ; 
and  there,  too,  rests  all  that  was  mortal  of  his  wife  who  soon  fol- 
lowed him  to  the  grave.* 

In  person,  Sydney  Smith,  as  he  has  been  described  to  us  by 
those  who  knew  him,  was  of  the  medium  height ;  plethoric  in  habit 
though  of  great  activity,  of  a  dense  brown  complexion,  a  dark  ex- 

*  Sydney  Smith's  personal  property  was  sworn  under  £80,000.  His  wife, 
for  whom  liberal  provision  was  made,  was  sole  executrix  of  his  will.  There 
M'as  a  legacy  of  £30,000  to  his  son  Wyndham,  and  his  servants  were  men- 
tioned in  several  bequests. 


ORIGINAL  PORTRAIT.  76 

pressive  eye,  an  open  countenance,  indicative  of  shrewdness,  hu- 
mour, and  benevolence.  There  is  a  look,  too,  in  the  English  en- 
graved portraits,  of  a  thoughtful  seriousness.  A  certain  heaviness 
in  his  figure  was  neutralized  by  constitutional  vivacity.  His 
"  sense,  wit,  and  clumsiness,"  said  a  college  companion,  gave  "  the 
idea  of  an  Athenian  carter."  He  once  sat  to  his  friend,  Gilbert 
Stuart  Newton,  for  an  abbot,  in  a  painting. 

Newton  made  a  portrait  of  Smith,  representing  him  in  the  later 
period  of  life  when  all  his  faculties  were  mellowed  and  refined. 
It  was  while  in  attendance  upon  the  artist  for  this  picture,  on  a 
warm  day,  that  the  wit  remarked  he  would  prefer  to  take  off  his 
flesh  and  sit  in  his  bones  !*  After  Newton's  death  the  portrait 
was  brought  to  America  by  his  widow.  In  1847,  a  copy  was 
made  from  it  for  Captain  E.  E.  Morgan,  by  Miss  Ann  Leslie,  sis- 
ter of  the  well-known  artist.  Not  long  after,  the  original  was  de- 
stroyed by  fire.  The  copy  has  been  kindly  lent  to  us  by  its  owner, 
and  the  engraving  placed  as  the  frontispiece  to  the  present  volume 
is  made  after  it. 

The  practical,  sound,  every-day,  working  character  of  Sydney 
Smith's  life,  is  its  greatest  lesson.     He  united  in  a  rare  manner 

*  The  jest,  a  thing  not  uncommon  with  humourists,  seems  to  have  done 
duty  on  another  occasion.  We  have  this  report  of  it  among  various  scraps 
of  conversation,  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir  (p.  238),  with  the  pleasant  addi- 
tion of  Mrs.  Jackson's  wonderment : — 

"  Nothing  amuses  me  more  than  to  ohserve  the  utter  want  of  perception 
of  a  joke  in  some  minds.  Mrs.  Jackson  called  the  other  day,  and  spoke  of 
the  oppressive  heat  of  last  week.  '  Heat,  ma'am  !'  I  said,  '  it  was  so  dreadful 
here,  that  1  found  there  was  nothing  left  for  it  but  to  take  off  my  flesh  and 
sit  in  my  bones.'  '  Take  off  your  flesh  and  sit  in  your  bones,  sir !  Oh  !  Mr. 
Smith !  how  could  you  do  that  V  she  exclaimed,  with  the  utmost  gravity. 
'  Nothing  more  easy,  ma'am  ;  come  and  see  next  time.'  But  she  ordered  her 
carriage,  and  evidently  thought  it  a  very  unorthodox  proceeding." 

There  is  another  anecdote  of  Newton's  studio.  The  artist  was  engaged  in 
painting  a  portrait  of  Moore,  which  the  poet  took  Smith,  from  a  breakfast 
with  Rogers,  to  see.  '  Couldn't  you  contrive,"  said  Sydney,  in  his  gravest 
manner  to  Newton,  "  to  throw  into  his  face  somewhat  of  a  stronger  expression 
of  hostility  to  the  Church  Establishment?"  (Moore's  Diary,  May  27,  1826,) 


T6  CHABACTEMSTICS. 

the  virtues  of  the  optimist  and  the  reformer.  An  ardent  devotee 
of  human  happiness,  he  did  not  destroy  hfe  to  improve  it ;  nor  did 
he  ever  cease  to  oppose  evils  in  the  way  of  its  prosperity.  While 
he  appears  taking  his  ease  in  that  great  inn,  the  world,  enjoying 
himself  and  communicating  pleasure  to  others,  he  is  quarrelling 
with  all  sorts  of  injustice  in  high  places  ;  contending  for  the  peasant 
and  the  labourer ;  advocating  the  rights  of  accused  criminals,  with 
a  word  for  poor  chimney-sweeps  ;  reading  lessons  to  squires,  par- 
liament men  and  bishops ;  battling  for  religious  and  political  free- 
dom. He  fought  a  long  fight  with  dulhiess,  pedantry,  prejudice, 
private  and  political  interest,  and  came  off  conqueror.  His  honest 
laugh  rang  through  the  whole  field.  An  instinctive  genius,  the 
inspiration  of  common  sense,  was  his  weapon.  He  had  an  advan- 
tage of  position  too  in  favour  of  his  wit  and  his  reforms  in  fighting 
under  the  protection  and  in  defence  of  the  established  Church  ;  for 
the  best  reformer  is  not  all  reformer.  He  must  have  some  point  of 
support,  or  how  can  he  wage  war  with  success  ?  Where  can  he  de- 
posit tlie  fruits  of  victory  ?  There  are  noisy  reformers  who  cut 
themselves  loose  from  all  positive  institutions,  and,  hke  the  poets' 
"  cats  in  air-pumps,"  attempt  subsistence  in  a  vacuum.  Sydney 
Smith  was  not  one  of  these  empty  Avhims. 

The  most  genial  and  conciliatory,  he  was  the  most  independent 
of  men.  His  independence  was,  with  his  other  virtues,  of  a  prac- 
tical character ;  ahke  above  obsequiousness,  indolence  and  churlish- 
ness. He  had  a  just  knowledge  of  the  respect  due  his  faculties 
and  attainments,  of  his  claims  upon  the  society  to  which  he  be- 
longed, his  party  and  his  church.  On  proper  occasions  he  asserted 
them  hi  a  manly  way ;  when  they  were  not  acknowledged  he  bore 
the  loss  philosophically,  and  even  sported  with  his  misfortunes. 
There  was  no  misanthropy  in  his  disposition. 

In  the  art  of  getting  on  in  the  world,  he  was  certainly  not  indif- 
ferent to  the  main  chance,  while  his  life  affords  an  illustration  of 
the  benevolence  of  men  of  moderate  means.  During  a  consider- 
able part  of  his  career  in  narrow  circumstances,  and  compelled  to 


INDEPENDENCE.  7T 

economy,  whether  selling  his  wife's  jewels  preaching  at  chapels, 
lecturing,  reviewing,  eking  out  a  curate's  humbleness  by  drafts  on 
humour  and  imagination,  he  is  constantly  doing  liberal  acts  ;  a  man 
of  charity  and  beneficence ;  bestowing  free-wUl  offerings  from  a 
life  of  self-denial  and  honourable  industry  ;  contributions  which  a 
generous  nature  extorted  from  a  stock  almost  too  small  for  home 
necessities. 

Independence  of  opinion  and  of  fortune  he  valued  most  highly, 
and  pursued  steadily  and  successfully,  the  one  for  the  other,  the 
inferior  for  the  superior.  In  the  wisdom  of  Burns  the  poet's 
manly  Epistle,  he  "  assiduously  waited  "  upon  Fortune  and  gathered 
wealth — 

"  Not  for  to  hide  it  in  a  hedge, 
Nor  for  a  train  attendant, 
But  for  the  glorious  privilege 
Of  being  independent." 

lie  had  the  courage  in  a  luxurious,  artificial  society,  where  weak 
men  are  crushed  by  conventionalisms,  of  appearing  Avhat  he  was 
and  spendmg  no  more  than  he  could  afford.  An  instance  of 
his  business  punctiHo  in  pecuniary  obligations  occurs  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  his  early  friend  Mr.  Beach.  The  latter  had  a  small  sum 
of  money  left  in  his  hands  on  settlement  with  his  son's  tutor.  Mr. 
Beach  credits  the  account  with  five  per  cent,  interest.  Sydney  in- 
sists positively  that  it  nncst  be  but  four,  and  will  be  under  no  obli- 
gation for  any  more.* 

His  personal  mdependence  was  shown  in  many  instances  during 
the  period  of  his  alliance  with  a  political  party  out  of  office ;  an 
association  unfriendly  to  his  clerical  advancement.  In  a  less  pub- 
lic light  it  was  exhibited  in  the  manly  freedom  of  his  intercourse 
with  his  friends.  His  wit  spared  none  of  their  absurdities.  His 
letters,  frequently  models  of  courtesy  and  compliment,  are  always 
frank  and  truthful. 

Tliis  resolute  self-possession,  though  based  on  brave,  natural 

*  Fourth  English  edition  of  the  Memoirs,  i.  109. 


78  HOPEFULNESS. 

qualities,  and  developed  with  freedom,  was  also  an  affair  of  convic- 
tion and  the  will.  Bashfulness  is  one  of  the  last  qualities  which 
would  be  assigned  to  Sydney  Smith,  but  we  read  that  he  was  shy 
even  in  his  early  manhood.  His  acuteness  of  mind,  however,  soon 
corrected  the  evil.  He  first  discovered,  he  says,  "  that  all  mankind 
were  not  solely  employed  in  observing  him,  as  all  young  people 
think,  and  that  shamming  was  of  no  use,  the  world  being  very 
clear-sighted,  and  soon  estimating  a  man  at  his  just  value.  This 
cured  me,  and  I  determined  to  be  natural,  and  let  the  world  find 
me  out."* 

Subsidiary  to  this  personal  courage  was  his  hopeful  way  of  look- 
ing at  the  world.  He  was  always  practising  and  inculcating  the 
disposition.  "  Some  very  excellent  people,"  he  said,  "  tell  you 
they  dare  not  hope.  To  me  it  seems  much  more  impious  to  dare 
to  despair."  He  had  an  excellent  rule  for  the  happiness  and  wis- 
dom of  Ufe  as  to  the  future,  not  to  look  too  far  into  it  for  inevita- 
ble though  probably  distant  disaster.  "  Take  short  views,  bope  for 
the  best,  and  trust  in  God."t  Inclined  by  temperament  to  antici- 
pate coming  evils — for  our  wit,  spite  of  his  many  jests,  was  a 
serious  man — h^  resisted  the  atrabiUous  tendency,  and  avoided 
drawing  drafts  on  the  misery  of  futurity.  "Never,"  he  said, 
"  give  way  to  melancholy ;  nothing  encroaches  more :  I  fight 
against  it  vigorously.  One  great  remedy  is,  to  take  short  views  of 
life.  Are  you  happy  now  ?  Are  you  hkely  to  remain  so  till  this 
evening  ?  or  next  week  ?  or  next  month  ?  or  next  year  ?  Then 
why  destroy  present  happiness  by  a  distant  misery,  which  may 
never  come  at  all,  or  you  may  never  live  to  see  it  ?  for  every  sub- 
stantial grief  has  twenty  shadows,  and  most  of  them  shadows  of 
your  own  making."  It  was  said  of  the  happy  nature  of  Ohver 
Goldsmith  that  he  had  a  knack  at  hoping :  with  Sydney  Smith  it 
was  a  principle.  Cheerfulness  he  made  an  art.  He  hked  houso- 
hold  illuminations  of  a  good  English  coal  fire,  "  the  living  thing," 
he  said,  "in  a  dead  room,"  abundance  of  lights,  flowers  on  his 

*  Mem.  i.  77,  324.  t  lb.  i.  167,  117. 


AN   ANECDOTE.  79 

table,  prints  and  pictures  on  liis  walls.  He  was  no  connoisseur 
in  tlie  latter,  and  if  he  bad  been,  could  not  bave  afforded  tbe  grati- 
fication of  tbe  taste,  but  be  made  poor  and  cbeap  pictures  do  tbe 
work  of  good  ones  by  filling  up  the  gap  between  with  bis  sport  and 
imagination. 

There  is  a  highly  characteristic  anecdote  of  tbe  man,  illustrating 
his  habitual  regard  to  human  happiness,  and  his  frequent  solicitude 
for  the  natural  welfare  of  children.  Tbe  story  is  thus  told  by  his 
daughter,  Lady  Holland :  "  One  of  bis  little  children,  then  in  debcate 
health,  had  for  some  time  been  in  the  habit  of  waking  suddenly  every 
evening ;  sobbing,  anticipating  the  death  of  parents,  and  all  the 
sorrows  of  life,  almost  before  Hfe  bad  begun.  He  could  not  bear 
this  unnatural  union  of  childhood  and  sorrow,  and  for  a  long  pe- 
riod, I  bave  beard  my  mother  say,  each  evening  found  liim,  at  the 
waking  of  his  child,  with  a  toy,  a  picture-book,  a  bunch  of  grapes, 
or  a  joyous  tale,  mixed  with  a  little  strengthening  advice  and  the 
tenderest  caresses,  till  tbe  habit  was  broken,  and  the  child  woke  to 
joy  and  not  to  sorrow." 

Tbe  intellectual  habits  of  Sydney  Smith  were  those  of  a  quick, 
keen,  sensitive  nature,  prompt  to  receive  impressions,  apt  to 
decide  upon  them,  cautious  of  its  convictions,  never  driven  at 
random.  Impatient  of  restraint,  ardent  and  vivacious,  he  was  re- 
markable for  bis  self-knowledge,  and  tbe  discriminating  use  of  his 
powers.  He  did  not  over-estimate  them  or  under-estimate  them ; 
he  knew  precisely  what  he  could  do ;  the  weight  of  the  projectile, 
the  momentum,  tbe  effect. 

His  habits  of  reading  were  somewliat  peculiar.  He  read  many 
books,  and  was  content,  on  principle,  to  secure  the  best  use  of  his 
faculties,  to  remain  ignorant  of  many  others.  He  was  constantly 
looking  into  his  stock  of  knowledge  and  strengthening  bis  defences 
on  the  weak  points.  In  this  way  he  laid  up  a  large  store  of  prac- 
tical, working  information.  His  directness  and  vivacity  of  mind 
led  him  at  on^e  to  the  essential  points  of  a  subject.  He  plucked 
out  the  heart  of  a  series  of  volumes,  in  a  morning.     The  happy 


80  STYLE. 

result  may  be  seen  in  his  reviews,  in  the  Edinburgh,  of  books  of 
travels — his  favoui'ite  reading. 

lie  wrote  rapidly,  making  few  corrections,  a  proof  of  his  exact 
discipliiie  of  mind,  for  his  writings  Imve  that  conciseness  which 
may  be  supposed  to  have  required  frequent  revision.  His  hand- 
writing, a  sign  of  his  impatience,  was  villainously  bad.  He  de- 
scribed it,  in  a  letter  to  a  gentleman  who  wished  to  borroAv  one  of 
his  sermons :  "  I  would  send  it  to  you  with  pleasure,  but  my  wri- 
ting is  as  if  a  swarm  of  ants,  escaping  from  an  ink-bottle,  had  walked 
over  a  sheet  of  paper  without  wiping  their  legs."*  It  is  amusing 
to  notice  his  lectures  to  Jeffrey,  on  his  cacography,  which  may  be 
attributed  to  a  similar  restlessness  of  mind. 

The  clearness  and  purity  of  his  style  are  noticeable.  It  is  direct, 
forcible,  manly  English ;  brief  Avithout  obscurity ;  rich  without  any 
extravagance  of  ornament ;  the  unaffected  language  of  a  gentleman 
and  a  scholar.  It  has  a  constant  tendency  to  the  aphorism — the  ripe 
fruit  hanging  on  the  tree  of  knowledge — noticeable  in  the  writings 
of  the  higher  order  of  men  of  genius ;  the  great  dramatists,  the 
poets  generally.  Bacon,  Burke,  Franklin,  Landor,  and  indeed 
most  of  the  classic  authors  who  pass  current  in  the  world  in  quo- 
tation. Wit,  indeed,  of  all  the  faculties,  is  the  most  rapid  and 
powerful  condenser;  it  puts  volumes  into  apophthegms;  has  a 
patent  for  proverbs ;  contracts  an  essay  to  an  aphorism ;  bottles 
an  argument  in  a  jest. 

Unless  where  pecuUar  Latinized  expressions  or  technical  terms 
r.re  intentionally  introduced  for  their  witty  effect,  Smith's  language 
is  of  the  purest  Saxon.  His  method  is  very  direct.  His  meaning 
reaches  us  pure  of  all  superfluities  and  pruned  of  all  tediousness. 
It  is  a  style,  too,  which  is  essentially  his  own,  a  reflex  of  ln"s  keen, 
impulsive,  straight-forward  character.  In  his  first  published  ser- 
mons he  has  been  charged  with  imitating  the  efforts  of  Jeremy 
Taylor  and  others  of  the  old  divines ;  but  tliis  transfusion,  Avhich 
appears  very  slightly,  is  rather  a  beauty.  When  he  advanced  into 
*  Memoirs,  i.  174. 


COLLOQUIAL   WIT.  81 

the  confli<;t  of  life  he  borrowed  no  weapons  from  others,  but  relied 
on  his  own  manly  vigour.  His  style,  consequently,  is  inimitable. 
It  is  capable  of  no  transpositions  or  changes.  The  same  meaning 
can  be  conveyed  only  in  tlie  same  words.  They  ai"e  those  pictur- 
esque, truthful  words;  rjady,  inevitable  to  a  man  of  genius;  coy 
of  their  presence  to  the  duUard. 

The  most  pervading  characteristic  of  Sydney  Smith's  writings 
is  his  wit ;  wit  blended  with  the  genial  humour  of  the  man.  It 
breathes  from  him  as  the  very  atmosphere  of  his  nature. 

Lord  John  Russell,  in  the  preface  to  one  of  the  volumes  of  his 
Memoirs  of  the  poet  Moore,  has  happily  discriminated  the  pecu- 
liarities of  this  omnipresent  fliculty,  as  it  was  developed  in  society. 
"  There  are,"  he  says,  "  two  kinds  of  colloquial  wit,  which  equally 
contribute  to  fame,  though  not  equally  to  agreeable  conversation. 
The  one  is  like  a  rocket  in  a  dark  air,  which  shoots  at  once  into 
the  sky,  and  is  the  more  surprising  from  the  previous  silence  and 
gloom ;  the  other  is  like  that  kind  of  firework  wliich  blazes  and 
bursts  out  in  every  direction,  exploding  at  one  moment,  and  shin- 
ing brilUantly  at  another,  eccentric  in  its  course,  and  changing  its 
shape  and  colour  to  many  forms  and  many  hues.  Or,  as  a  dinner 
is  set  out  with  two  kinds  of  champagne,  so  these  two  kinds  of  wit, 
the  stiU  and  the  sparkling,  are  to  be  found  in  good  company. 
Sheridan  and  Talleyrand  were  among  the  best  examples  of  the 
first.  Hare*  (as  I  have  heard)  and  Sydney  Smith  were  brilliant 
instances  of  the  second.  Hare  I  knew  only  by  tradition,  but  with 
Sydney  Smith  I  long  lived  intimately.  His  great  delight  was  to 
pi'oduce  a  succession  of  ludicrous  images :  these  followed  each 
other  with  a  rapidity  that  scarcely  left  time  to  laugh ;  he  himself 

*  James  Hare,  the  intimate  of  Charles  James  Fox  and  his  circle,  the  friend 
and  correspondent  of  Sehvyn.  Few  passages  of  his  wit  survive  his  personal 
memory.  Jesse  (Sehvyn  and  his  contemporaries,  iii.  285)  gives  the  following 
neat  specimen  :  "He  was  one  day  conversing  with  General  Fitzpatrick,  whei> 
the  latter  affected  to  discredit  the  report  of  General  Burgoyne  having  been 
defeated  at  Sara.oga.  "Perhaps  you  maybe  right  in  your  opinion,"  st.'^ 
Hare,  "but  tak<    t  from  me  as  a  flying  rumour." 

4* 


82  VEIN   OF  HUMOUR. 

laugliing  loudest  and  with  more  enjoyment  tlian  any  one.  This 
electric  contact  of  mirth  came  and  went  with  the  occasion ;  it  can- 
not be  repeated  or  reproduced.  Anything  woidd  give  occasion  to 
it.  For  instance,  having  seen  in  the  newspapers  that  Sir  -^neas 
Mackintosh*  was  come  to  town,  he  drew  such  a  ludicrous  carica- 
ture of  Sir  ^neas  and  Lady  Dido,  for  the  amusement  of  their 
namesake,  that  Sir  James  Mackintosh  rolled  on  the  floor  in  fits  of 
laughter,  and  Sydney  Smith,  striding  across  him,  exclaimed, 
*  Ruat  Justitia !'  His  powers  of  fun  were  at  the  same  time  united 
with  the  strongest  and  most  practical  common  sense.  So  that 
while  he  laughed  away  seriousness  at  one  minute,  he  destroyed  in 
the  next  some  rooted  prejudice  which  had  braved  for  a  thousand 
years  the  battle  of  reason  and  the  breeze  of  ridicule.  The  letters 
of  Peter  Plymley  bear  the  greatest  likeness  to  his  conversation ; 
the  description  of  Mr.  Isaac  Hawkins  Brown  dinmg  at  the  Court 
of  Naples  in  a  volcano  coat  with  lava  buttons,  and  the  comparison 
of  ]Mr.  Caiming  to  a  large  blue-bottle  fly  with  its  parasites,  most 
resemble  the  pictures  he  raised  up  in  social  conversation.  It  may 
be  averred  for  certain  that  in  this  style  he  has  never  been  equalled, 
and  I  do  not  suppose  he  will  ever  be  surpassed."! 

In  the  occasional  passages  of  Moore's  Diary  in  which  Sydney 
Smith  is  mentioned,  always  under  agreeable  circumstances,  there  are 
numerous  instances  of  this  peculiar  vein  of  humour,  "  huddling  jest 
upon  jest  with  impossible  conveyance,"  the  sagacity  apparently 
not  inspiring  the  wit,  but  the  extravagance  giving  birth  to  the 
wisdom.  At  a  breakfast  at  Rogers's,  "  Smith,  full  of  comicality 
and  fancy,  kept  us  all  in  roars  of  laughter.  In  talking  of  the 
Btories  about  dram-drinkers  catching  fire,  pursued  the  idea  in  every 
possible  shape.  The  inconvenience  of  a  man  coming  too  near  the 
candle  when  he  was  speaking,  '  Sir,  your  observation  has  caught 

*  Twenty-third  laird  of  the  Mackintoshes  of  that  ilk,  was  created  a  Baronet 
in  1812.  He  died  in  the  sixty-ninth  year  of  his  age,  in  1820,  when  the  Bar- 
onetcy became  extinct.  "  He  was  a  gentleman  of  the  greatest  worth,"  says 
his  obituary  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine. 

t  Preface  to  the  Sixth  Volume  of  Memoirs  of  Thomas  Moore,  pp.  xii-xiv 


WITTY    EXTRAVAGANCE.  83 

fire.'  Then  imagined  a  person  breaking  into  a  blaze  in  the  pul- 
pit ;  the  engines  called  to  put  him  out ;  no  water  to  be  had,  the 
man  at  the  waterworks  being  a  Unitarian  or  an  Atheist."  This 
was  mostly  pui'e  fun.  On  the  same  occasion,  one  of  his  apparently 
ludicrous  sayings  displayed  a  keen  wit,  with  matter  for  profound 
thought,  when  he  said  of  some  one — "  He  has  no  command  over  hid 
understanding ;  it  is  always  getting  between  his  legs  and  tripping 
him  up."*  Another  instance  of  tliis  humourous  amplification  in  his 
table  talk,  which  is  happily  related  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir, 
brings  the  very  man  before  us,  "in  his  habit  as  he  lived:" — 
"  Some  one  mentioned  that  a  young  Scotchman,  who  had  been 
lately  in  the  neighbourhood,  was  about  to  marry  an  Irish  widow, 
double  his  age  and  of  considerable  dimensions.  '  Going  to  marry 
her !'  he  exclaimed,  bursting  out  laughing ;  '  going  to  marry  her  I 
impossible  !  you  mean  a  part  of  her ;  he  could  not  marry  her  all 
himself.  It  would  be  a  case,  not  of  bigamy,  but  trigamy ;  the  neigh- 
bourhood or  the  magistrates  should  interfere.  There  is  enough  of 
her  to  furnish  wives  for  a  whole  parish.  One  man  marry  her !  it 
is  monstrous.  You  might  people  a  colony  with  her ;  or  give  an 
assembly  with  her ;  or  perhaps  take  your  morning's  walk  round 
her,  always  provided  there  were  frequent  resting-places,  and  you 
were  in  rude  health.  I  once  was  rash  enough  to  try  walking 
round  her  before  breakfast,  but  only  got  half-way  and  gave  it  up 
exhausted.  Or  you  might  read  the  Riot  Act  and  disperse  her ;  in 
short,  you  might  do  anything  with  her  but  marry  her.'  '  Oh,  Jilr. 
Sydney !'  said  a  young  lady,  recovering  from  the  general  laugh, 
'  did  you  make  all  that  yourself?'  '  Yes,  Lucy,'  throwing  himself 
back  in  his  chair  and  shaking  with  laughter,  '  all  myself,  child ;  all 
my  own  thunder.  Do  you  think,  when  I  am  about  to  make  a  joke, 
I  send  for  my  neighbours  C.  and  G.,  or  consult  the  clerk  and 
church-wardens  upon  it  ?  But  let  us  go  into  the  garden ;'  and,  all 
laughing  tttl  we  cried,  without  hats  or  bonnets,  we  sallied  forth 
out  of  his  glorified  window  into  the  garden."! 

*  Moore'i  Diary,  May  27,  '826.  t  Memoir,  i.  304-5. 


S-i  KINDLY   JESTS. 

The  best  proof  of  the  kindUness  of  Sydney  Smith's  wit  is,  tliat 
it  did  not  offend  the  friends  upon  whom  it  was  played  off.  It  wa? 
truthful  without  bitterness :  its  playful  brightness  cleared  the  at^ 
mospliere,  but  the  bolt  never  scathed.  His  jests  upon  Jeffrey,  the 
"  maximus  minimus,"  were  incessant,  but  they  did  not  interrupt 
mutual  friendship  and  esteem.  The  strongest  recognition  of  the 
kindliness  which  underlay  the  mirth,  is  in  a  compliment  paid  by 
the  Earl  of  Dudley,  whose  eccentricities,  based  on  physical  in- 
firmity, might  have  excused  sensitiveness.  When  Smith  took  leave 
of  him,  on  going  from  London  to  Yorkshire,  Dudley  said,  "  You 
have  been  laughing  at  me  constantly,  Sydney,  for  the  last  seven 
years,  and  yet,  in  all  that  time,  you  never  said  a  single  thing  to  me 
that  I  Avished  unsaid."  The  fact  is,  that  the  humour  of  Sydney 
Smith  was  a  relief  from  the  usual  social  impertinences,  the  cliief 
ingredient  of  which  is  malevolence,  which  pass,  in  society,  under 
the  name  of  wit.  Take  away  the  malignity,  the  spite,  the  per- 
versions, the  irreligion,  the  indecorum  of  most  witty  sayings,  and 
how  small  a  residuum  is  left.  There  was  nothing  of  the  slow, 
stealthy  approach  of  the  sarcastic,  biting  sayer  of  "  good  things" 
in  Sydney  Smith.  His  jests  were  in  a  rollicking  vein  of  extrav- 
aganza. The  tendency  of  this  humour  is  to  license,  but  Smith's 
conversation  was  innocent.  Moore,  who  had  the  best  opportunity 
of  knowing  the  range  of  Smith's  social  moods,  says,  "  in  his  gayest 
flights,  though  boisterous,  he  is  never  vulgar."*  Rogers  described 
liis  style  to  the  life  :  "  Whenever  the  conversation  is  getting  dull, 
lie  throws  in  some  touch  which  makes  it  rebound  and  rise  again 
as  light  as  ever.  There  is  this  difference  between  Luttrell  and 
Smith :  after  Luttrell,  you  remember  what  good  things  he  said — 
after  Smith,  you  remember  how  much  you  laughed."t 

*  Diary,  March  13,  1833. 

t  Moore's  Diary,  April  10,  1823.  On  the  same  occasion  Moore  writes: 
"  Smith  particularly  amusing.  Have  rather  held  out  against  him  hitherto ; 
but  this  day  ho  conquered  me ;  and  I  am  novs^  his  victim,  in  the  laughing  way, 
for  life.  His  imagination  of  a  duel  between  two  doctors,  with  oil  of  Croton 
on  the  tips  of  their  fingers,  f^uig  to  touch  each  other's  lips,  highly  ludi- 
crous " 


I 


WISDOM   OF   THE   WIT.  85 

111  Ills  own  Essay  on  Wit,  Smith  fearlessly  quoted  the  miilti- 
fiirious  and  exhaustive  definition  of  Barrow.  lie  may  be  tried 
on  eacli  of  its  counts,  and  be  found  honourably  guilty  of  perpe- 
trating every  jest  enumerated  in  the  indictment.  The  "pat  a!hi- 
sion  to  a  known  story,"  is  exemplified  in  the  case  of  memorable 
Mrs.  Partington ;  the  "  forging  an  apposite  tale,"  in  the  passage 
from  the  Synod  of  Dort  and  the  story  of  "  the  Village ;"  while  the 
"  dress  of  humourous  expression,"  the  "  odd  simihtude,"  the  "  bold 
scheme  of  speech,"  the  "  tart  irony,"  the  "  lusty  hyperbole,"  the 
"acute  nonsense,"  were  peculiarly  Sydney  Smith's  own.  The 
reductio  ad  absurdum  was  his  favourite  method.  He  gave  his 
fish  line,  and  swam  it  to  death.  He  well  knew  how  "  affinity  of 
sound  and  words  and  phrases"  enriched  expression,  and  practised 
the  art  in  his  style,  but  the  perversion  of  these  things  in  puns  he 
despised.  We  have  noticed  only  two  instances  in  all  his  wri- 
tings.* 

If  the  form  of  his  wit  indicated  something  of  levity,  its  spirit 
was  sound  and  earnest.  There  was  a  grave  thought  always  at  the 
bottom.  This  has  given  liis  writings  a  pei'manent  value,  while 
brilliant  contemporary  reputations  have  fluttered  and  died.  On 
this  point  an  acute  critic,  Mrs.  Jameson,  remarks  —  and  her  testi- 
mony may  be  taken  for  the  greater  value,  since  she  complains, 
that  "  her  nature  feels  the  Avant  of  the  artistic  and  imaginative  in 
his  nature" — that  "the  Avit  of  Sydney  Smith  almost  always  in- 
volved a  thought  worth  remembering  for  its  own  sake,  as  well  as 
worth  remembering  for  its  brilliant  vehicle :  the  value  of  ten  thou- 
sand pounds  sterling  of  sense  concentrated  into  a  cut  and  polished 
diamond.  It  is  not  true,  as  I  have  heard  it  said,"  she  continues, 
"  that  after  leaving  the  society  of  Sydney  Smith,  you  only  remem- 
bered how  much  you  had  laughed,  not  the  good  things  at  Avhicb 

*  One  of  -Napoleon,  in  1798,  "Ireland  safe;  and  Buonaparte  embayed  in 
Egypt;  that  is,  surrounded  by  Beys  !"  The  other,  in  a  note  to  tlie  Couutes* 
Grey :  "  If  any  one  bearing  the  name  of  Grey  comes  this  way  (to  Combe 
¥lorcy),  send  him  to  us  :  I  am  Grey-men-iverous  !" 


86  LETTERS. 

you  had  laugt^d.     Few  men — wits  by  profession — ever  said  so 
many  memoraole  things  as  those  recorded  of  Sydney  Smith."* 

The  Letters  of  Sydney  Smith  have  little  pretension  in  their 
form  as  epistolary  compositions ;  but  they  are  rare  specimens  of  a 
rare  class ;  ranking,  for  their  terseness  and  witty  flavour,  with  the 
notes  and  "  notelets"  of  Charles  Lamb.  They  are  generally  brief, 
never  attempt  any  regular  or  didactic  exposition  of  a  subject,  but 
contain,  in  virtue  of  their  epigi-ammatic  tinithfulness — to  say 
nothing  of  the  constant  entertainment — profitable  matter  of  gen- 
eral wisdom  and  information  of  the  men  and  affairs  of  his  day,  to 
take  their  place  with  the  published  correspondence  of  the  greatest 
of  his  contemporaries.  Li  a  few  lines  he  settles  a  moral  question, 
draws  the  portrait  of  a  public  man,  pleasantly  corrects  a  defect,  or 
rallies  the  spirits  of  a  friend.  He  wrote  often  to  Jeffrey,  and  to 
John  Murray ;  less  frequently  to  Allen,  Lord  Holland,  Earl  Grey, 
and  in  the  latter  part  of  his  life  exchanged  a  gouty  correspondence 
with  Sir  George  Philips,  and  wrote  warm  compUmentary  notes  to 
Dickens.  But  most  of  his  letters  are  addressed  to  ladies ;  to  Lady 
Holland,  to  Mrs,  Meynell,  to  Miss  Georgiana  Harcourt,  daughter 
of  the  Archbishop  of  York,  the  Countess  Grey,  Lady  Mary 
Bennett,  and  others.  Playful  and  sincerely  affectionate,  they  are 
the  perfection  of  ingenious  flattery,  the  sweetness  of  the  adulation 
being  taken  off  by  the  humourous  extravagance. 

A  paragraph  is  due  to  Holland  House,  a  seat  sacred  in  the  his- 
tory of  Letters,  the  centre  of  the  important  social,  literary,  and 
political  circle  with  which  Sydney  Smith  revolved  during  the 
greater  part  of  his  life.  Its  traditions  go  back  to  the  eai-ly  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  when  it  was  built  by  Sir  Walter 
Cope-t     The  grounds  had  belonged  to  the  noble  family  of  the  De 

*  Common-Place  Book  of  Thoughts,  Memories  and  Fancies,  p.  49. 

t  There  is  a  pleasant  account  of  the  historical  incidents  connected  with 
Holland  House,  in  two  papers  by  Leigh  Hunt,  in  Nos.  204  and  I'Oft  of  House- 
hold AVords. 


HOLLAND   HOUSE.  87 

Vere's  since  the  Conquest.  The  house  was  bequeathed  by  Coi^e 
to  his  son-in-law,  Henry  Rich,  first  Earl  of  Holland,  a  son  of  the 
first  Eai-1  of  Warwick.  Rich  was  a  gallant  man,  a  favourite  at  the 
coui-t  of  Charles  I.  In  the  beginning  of  the  civil  war  he  sided  with 
the  Parhament,  then  took  up  ax'ms  for  the  King — was  taken  pris- 
oner and  executed  in  1 G48.  Fairfax,  the  Parliamentary  general, 
next  occupied  the  mansion ;  when,  as  tradition  goes,  it  was  privy 
to  the  deliberations  of  Cromwell.  After  the  Restoration  it  had 
various  occupants,  Pope's  "downright  Shippen"  among  them. 
Before  establishing  himself  at  Kensington,  King  William,  as  we 
learn,  from  Macaulay's  History,  thought  of  the  House  as  a  resi- 
dence, and  occupied  it  a  few  weeks.*  The  second  Earl  of  Hol- 
land, the  elder  branch  of  his  family  failing,  united  the  titles  of 
Warwick  and  Holland.  Marriage  with  the  widow  of  his  son,  the 
Countess  of  Warwick,  in  1716,  made  Addison  an  inmate  of 
Holland  House.  The  poet  passed  there  the  last  three  years  of  his 
life,  not  very  happily,  as  Johnson  would  have  us  infer,  who  repre- 
sents him  as  a  slave  to  the  rank  of  the  Countess.  He  gained  new 
titles  of  his  own  to  honour,  however,  at  the  time,  for  it  was  in  the 
second  year  of  his  maniage  that  he  was  made  Secretary  of  State. 
There  is  a  doubtful  story  of  his  meditating  Spectators  in  the 
library,  refreshed  by  a  bottle  of  wine  at  either  end  of  the  room. 
This,  if  it  occurred  at  all,  must  have  been  before  his  marriage, 
since  the  Spectator  closed  with  the  year  1714.  It  was  in  a  cham- 
ber of  HoUand  House  that  the  death  scene  occurred,  when 
Addison  called  to  him  his  step-son,  the  young  Earl  of  Warwick,  to 
"  see  how  a  Christian  can  die."  The  family  of  the  Earls  of  Hol- 
land becoming  extinct,  in  1759,  the  house  became,  soon  after,  by 
purchase,  the  property  of  Henry  Fox,  the  crafty  politician  of  the 
Walpole  era,  who  was  created  Lord  Holland,  the  first  of  the 
present  line.  His  father  was  Sir  Stephen  Fox,  who,  from  being 
a  choristej  boy  at  Sahsbury  Cathedral,  was  called  to  an  inferior 
situation  at  court,  attended  Charles  II.  in  exile,  and  on  his  returp 
*  Chapter  xi.,  vol.  iii. 


88  LOUD   HOLLAND. 

secured  an  honourable  fortune  by  liis  financial  skill  and  integrity. 
"In  a  word,'  says  Evelyn,  in  his  Diary,  "never  was  man  more 
fortunate  than  Sir  Stephen ;  he  is  a  handsome  person,  virtuous, 
and  very  religious."*  He  was  seventy-six  years  old  when  he 
married  a  second  time,  and  became  the  father  of  Henry  Fox.  A 
son  of  the  latter,  Stephen  Fox,  was  the  second  Lord  Holland,  elder 
brother  of  Charles  James  Fox.  Stephen  Fox  died  young,  and 
left  the  title  to  the  late  Lord  Holland,  who  restored  the  literary 
prestige  of  the  house,  not  only  by  liis  own  writings,  but  by  his 
patronage  of  merit.  His  liberal  parliamentary  career  is  matter 
of  recent  history.  His  chief  writings  are,  Lives  of  Lope  de 
Vega  and  Guillem  de  Castro,  a  translation  of  three  Spanish  come- 
dies, and  of  a  Canto  of  the  Orlando  Furioso,  the  Preface  to  Fox's 
History  of  James  II.,  for  the  copyright  of  which  Murray  paid  the 
magnificent  sum  of  four  thousand  pounds,  the  Prefaces  to  his  edi- 
tions, from  the  original  MSS.,  of  Earl  "Waldegrave's  Memoirs,  and 
Horace  Walpole's  Last  Ten  Years  of  the  Reign  of  George  II., 
and  posthumous  Recollections  of  Foreign  Courts,  and  Memoirs  of 
the  Whig  party.  He  was  a  clever  writer  of  occasional  verses. 
His  couplet  to  the  poet  Rogers,  afiixed  to  a  garden-seat  in  the 
grounds  of  Holland  House,  is  very  neat : — 

"  Here  Rogers  sat ;  and  here  for  ever  dwell 
To  me,  those  Plctusares  tliat  he  sang  so  well." 

The  lines  which  were  found  on  his  dressing-table  at  his  death, 
are  as  finely  conceived : — 

"  Nephew  of  Fox  and  friend  of  Grey  — 
Enough  my  meed  of  fame, 
If  those  who  deigned  to  observe  me  say 
I  injured  neither  name." 

The  amiable  character  of  Lord  Holland,  no  less  than  his  intellec- 
tual characteristics,  endeared  him  to  Sydney  Smith.  Lady  Holland 
celebrates  their  conversation : — "  short,  varied,  interspersed  with 
wit,  illustration  and  anecdote  on  both  sides  ;  the  perfection  of  so- 
*  Diary,  September,  6,  1680. 


LADY    HOLLAND.  89 

oial  intercourse,  a  sort  of  mental  dram-drinking,  rare  as  it  was 
delightful."* 

An  important  position  in  the  literary  aimals  of  Holland  House 
belongs  to  Lady  Holland.  She  was  the  daughter  and  heir  of 
Richard  Vassall  and  the  divorced  wife  of  Sir  Godfrey  Webster. 
Lord  Holland,  previous  to  his  maiTiage  to  her,  in  1797,  paid  to 
her  husband  six  thousand  pounds  damages  in  a  criminal  action. 
He  took,  at  the  marriage,  the  name  of  VassaU.  Lady  Holland 
had  talent,  knew  how  to  shine  among  the  wits,  be  fascinating  and 
influential,  was  often  a  warm  friend,  while  her  domineering  patron- 
age appears  at  times  to  have  been  sufficiently  offensive.  It  is 
curious  to  note  Sydney  Smith's  recognition  of  a  Hollandophobia 
visiting  all  new  guests  at  the  house.  The  poet  Campbell,  at  the 
age  of  thirty,  went  there  with  dread.  "  Lady  Holland,"  he  writes 
to  a  friend,  "  is  a  formidable  woman.  She  is  cleverer,  by  several 
degrees,  than  Buonaparte."  Rogers  told  a  characteristic  story  of 
her  manner : — "  When  Lady  Holland  wanted  to  get  rid  of  a  fop, 
she  used  to  say,  '  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  I  w^sh  you  would  sit  a 
little  further  off;  there  is  something  on  your  handkerchief  which  I 
don't  quite  like.'  "f  Very  unlike  this  was  Sydney  Smith's  descrip- 
tion of  the  kind  and  intellectual  Miss  Fox,  Lord  Holland's  sister : — 
"  Oh,  she  is  perfection :  she  always  gives  me  the  idea  of  an  aged 
angel." 

Byron  gave  some  caustic  touches  to  the  literary  set  at  Holland 
House,  in  his  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers,  with  a  c!it<:r;g 
glance  at  "  My  lady."  There  are  some  instances  of  her  rule  in  Rogrrs' 
Table  Talk,|  and  an  occasional  glimpse,  in  Moore's  Diaiy,  of  her 

*  Memoirs,  i.  78. 

t  Dyce's  Table  Talk,  p.  273. 

}  Take  one  for  the  sake  of  the  adroitly-turned  compliment  at  the  close : — 
"  Lord  Holland  never  ventured  to  ask  any  one  to  dinner  (not  even  me,  whom 
lie  had  known  so  long  and  so  intimately)  without  previously  consulting:  Lriiy 
IL  Shortly  before  his  death  I  called  at  Holland  House,  and  found  only  Ltvdy 
n.  within.  As  I  was  coming  out  I  met  Lord  Holland,  who  said,  '  Well,  rlo 
jou  return  to  dinner?'  I  answered,  'No;  I  have  not  been  invited.'  Porlinjv; 
this  deference  to  Lady  H.  was  not  to  be  regretted ;  for  Lord  Holland  was  so 


90  GARDEN  SCENE. 

"rather  bravura  mood."  A  Sunday  garden  scene,  in  tliat  record, 
is  picturesque  :  "  Breakfasted  witJi  Rogers.  Went  out  to  Holland 
House.  The  levee  there  of  a  Sunday  always  delightful.  My 
Lord  on  his  stock-still  pony,  taking  exercise,  as  he  thinks:  and 
my  Lady  in  her  whiskey,  surrounded  by  savans.  There  were  to- 
day Sydney  Smith,  Brougham,  Jeffrey,  &c.  Sydney  Smith 
praised  my  '  Byron,'  the  first  book  of  mine  (or  indeed  any  one 
else's)  I  ever  heard  him  give  a  good  Avord  to ;  seemed  to  do  it, 
too,  with  sincerity."*  Elsewhere  Moore  chronicles  Lord  Holland 
at  breakfast  "  in  liis  gouty  chair,  but  with  a  face  as  gay  and  shin- 
ing as  that  of  a  schoolboy."  He  has  a  happy  look  in  Leslie's  pic- 
ture of  the  Library  at  Holland  House,  where  he  is  introduced 
with  full  lengths  of  Lady  Holland  and  their  constant  companion, 
Allen  ;  who  appears  as  well  filled  out  in  person  and  beneficent  in 
countenance  as  his  Lordship. 

There  are  some  very  pleasant  glimpses  of  Holland  House  in 
Sydney  Smith's  Letters.  Writing  to  Lady  Holland,  he  says: — "I 
am  sure  it  is  better  for  Lord  Holland  and  you  to  be  at  Holland 
House,  because  you  both  hate  exercise  (as  every  person  of  sense 
does),  and  you  must  be  put  in  situations  where  it  can  be  easily 
and  pleasantly  taken.  Even  Allen  gets  some  exercise  at  Hol- 
land House,  for  Horner,  Sheridan,  and  Lord  Lauderdale  take 
him  out  on  the  gravel-walk,  to  milk  him  for  bullion,  Spain,  Amer- 
ica, and  India ;  whereas,  in  London,  he  is  milked  in  that  stall  be- 
•ovv  stairs."t 

In.  another  letter  to  Lady  Holland,  without  date,  Allen  reap- 

-  ears : — "  I  know  nothing  more  agreeable  than  a  dinner  at  Holland 

House ;  but  it  must  not  begin  at  ten  in  the  morning,  and  last  till 

BIX.     I  should  be  incapable,  for  the  last  four  hours,  of  laughing  at 

Lord  Holland's  jokes,  eating  Raffaelle's  cakes,  or  repelling  Mr 

Allen's  attacks  upon  the  church." 

hospitable  and  jrood-iiatured,  that,  had  he  been  left  to  himself,  he  would  have 
had  a  crowd  at  his  table  daily." — (Dyce's  Recollections,  p.  275.) 

*  Moore's  Diary,  May  2,  1830. 

t  Hesliugton,  April  21,  1810. 


macaulay's  tribute.  91 

Allen's  cliemistry  and  opinions  were  always  a  resource  for  Syd- 
ney Smith.  Moore  lias  one  of  these  occasions ;  dmiiig  at  Holland 
House,  he  enters  in  his  Diary : — "  Sydney  Smith  very  comical 
about  the  remedy  that  Lady  Holland  is  going  to  use  for  the  book- 
worm, which  is  making  great  ravages  in  the  library.  She  is  about 
to  have  them  washed  with  some  mercurial  preparation  ;  and  Smith 
says  it  is  Davy's  opinion  that  the  air  will  become  charged  with  the 
mercury,  and  that  the  whole  family  will  be  salivated.  'I  shall  see 
Allen,'  says  Smith,  'some  day,  Avith  his  tongue  hanging  out,  speech- 
less, and  shall  take  the  opportunity  to  stick  a  few  pi'inciples  into 
hun.'  "* 

The  finest  tribute  to  the  literary  glories  of  Holland  House,  under 
the  long  reign  of  its  late  master,  is  in  an  article  on  Lord  Holland, 
by  Macaulay,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  July,  1841 — where,  in 
most  musical  periods,  are  painted  the  reminiscences  of  "  a  few 
old  men"  visiting  the  locality  on  which  the  great  city  is  so  rapidly 
encroaching.     "  With  peculiar  fondness  they  wiU  recall  that  ven- 
erable chamber,  in  which  all  the  antique  gravity  of  a  college  library 
was  so  singularly  blended  with  all  tliat  female  grace  and  wit  could 
devise  to  embellish  a  di'awing-room.     They  will  recollect,  not  un- 
moved, those  shelves,  loaded  with  the  varied  learning  of  many 
lands  and  many  ages  ;  those  portraits  in  which  were  preserved  the 
features  of  the  best  and  wisest  Englishmen  of  two  generations. 
They  will  recollect  how  many  men  who  have  guided  the  politics 
of  Europe — who  have   moved   great  assemblies  by  reason  and 
eloquence  —  who  have  put  life  into  bronze  or  canvass,  or  who  have 
left  to  posterity  things  so  written  as  it  shall  not  willingly  let  them 
die  —  were  there  mixed  with  all  that  was  loveliest  and  gayest  in  the 
society  of  the  most  splendid  of  capitals.     They  will  remember  the 
sinorular  character  which  belonged  to  that  circle,  in  which  every 
talent  and  accomplishment,  every  art  and  science,  had  its  place. 
They  \V\\\  remember  how  the  last  debate  was  discussed  in  one 
corner,  and  the  last  comedy  of  Scribe  in  another ;  while  Wilkie 
*  ])iary,  April  6,  1823. 


92  CLIQUES. 

gazed  Avith  modest  admiration  on  Reynolds'  Baretti ;  while  Mack 
intosli  turned  over  Thomas  Aquinas,  to  verify  a  quotation ;  while 
Talleyrand  related  his  conversations  with  Barras  at  the  Luxem- 
burg, or  his  ride  with  Lannes  over  the  field  of  AusterUtz.  They 
will  remember,  above  all,  the  grace  —  and  the  kindness,  far  more 
admirable  than  grace  —  with  which  the  princely  hospitality  of  that 
ancient  mansion  was  dispensed." 

Whilst  honouring  these  associations  of  Sydney  Smith's  manly 
and  noble  friendships,  it  is  but  justice  to  the  society  of  his  age,  to 
remind  the  reader,  that  there  were  brilliant  thinkers  and  writers 
outside  of  the  charmed  circle  and  visiting  hst  of  Holland  House, 
of  whose  existence  we  are  scarcely  reminded  in  the  letters  and 
conversations  of  this  clever  divine.  "  We  should  never  discover," 
remarks  the  North  American  Review,  "from  this  chronicle  that 
Coleridge  also  talked,  Carlyle  reasoned.  Lamb  jested,  Hazlitt 
criticised,  and  Shelley  and  Keats  sang  in  those  days.  Within  the 
sensible  zone  of  English  life,  as  that  term  is  usually  understood, 
Sydney  lived.  His  scope  was  within  the  Whig  ranks  in  politics, 
and  the  EstabUshed  Chui-ch  pale  in  religion.  The  iron  horizon  of 
caste  is  the  framework  of  this  attractive  picture."* 

It  is  to  be  noticed  also,  in  this  connection,  how  little  Smith's 
reputation  was  promoted  by  the  arts  of  the  press  of  the  present 
day.  His  associates  avoided  mere  literary  notoriety.  The  Edin- 
burgh Review  was  anonymous,  and  it  was  only  in  his  latter  days, 
when  he  wrote,  occasionally,  to  the  newspapers,  and  his  "  works" 

*  N.  A.  Rev.  Jan.,  1 856.  An  appreciative  view  of  the  essential  personal  char- 
acter of  Sydney  Smith,  by  Mr.  H.  T.  Tuckerman.  The  list  of  omissions  might 
be  enlarged  by  many  honcured  names.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  however,  that 
Smith  was  or  would  have  been  insensible  to  the  merit  of  the  great  authors  just 
named,  or  that  the  "  Chronicle"  tells  the  whole  story  of  his  tastes  and  acquisi- 
tions. Preoccupied  with  his  own  duties,  he  was  slow  or  indifferent  in  making 
new  acquaintances.  In  1848,  ten  years  after  Carlyle  had  published  his  Sartor 
Resartus,  and  three  years  after  the  publication  of  his  French  llevolution, 
Smith  writes  to  a  h\dy  friend  :  "  I  have  not  read  Carlyle,  though  I  have  got. 
him  on  my  list.  I  am  rather  curious  about  him."  But  had  any  man  ever 
nobler  friends,  or  did  any  ever  honour  such  friends  more  ^ 


CONTEMPORARY  NOTICES.  93 

had  been  collected,  tliat  Sydney  Smith's  name  was  mucJi  before 
the  public.  There  are  few  early  notices  of  him  by  his  brother 
authors. 

Byron  has  an  allusion  in  "  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Review- 
ers," to  "  Smug  Sydney,"  and  in  his  sixteenth  Canto  of  Don  Juan, 
in  the  description  of  the  banquet : — 

"  And  lo  !  upon  that  day  it  came  to  pass, 

I  sat  next  that  o'cnvhelming  son  of  heaven, 
The  very  powerful  oarson,  Peter  Pitli, 
The  loudest  wit  I  e'er  was  deafened  with, 

"  I  knew  hira  in  his  livelier  London  days, 
A  brilliant  diner-out,  though  but  a  curate ; 

And  not  joke  he  cut  but  earned  its  praise. 
Until  preferment,  coming  at  a  sure  rato, 

(0  Providence  !  how  wondrous  aie  thy  ways! 
Who  would  suppose  thy  gifts  sometimes  obdurate  ?) 

Gave  him,  to  lay  the  devil  who  looks  o'er  Lincoln, 

A  fat  fen  vicarage,  and  nought  to  think  on. 

"  His  jokes  were  sermons,  and  his  sermons  jokes  ; 

But  both  were  thrown  away  amongst  the  fens ; 
For  wit  hath  no  great  friend  in  aguish  folks. 

No  longer  ready  ears  and  short-Iiand  pens 
Imbibed  the  gay  bon-mot,  or  happy  hoax : 

The  poor  priest  was  reduced  to  common  sense, 
Or  to  coarse  efforts  very  loud  and  long. 
To  hammer  a  hoarse  laugh  from  the  thick  throng." 

Moore  compliments  him  in   some  verses  written  about  1840 
entitled,  "  The  Triumphs  of  Farce." 

"And  still  let  us  laugh,  preach  the  world  as  it  may, 

"Wlicre  the  cream  of  the  joke  is,  the  swarm  will  soon  follow; 
Heroics  arc  very  fine  things  in  their  way. 
But  the  laugh,  at  tlic  long-ran,  will  cany  it  hollow. 

"  Yes,  Jocus  !  gay  god,  whom  the  Gentiles  supplied, 

And  whose  worship  not  even  among  Christians  declines ; 
In  our  senates  thou'st  languished,  since  Sheridan  died, 
But  Sydney  still  keeps  thee  alive  in  our  shrines. 

"  Rare  Sydney !  thrice  honoured  the  stall  where  he  sits. 
And  be  his  every  honour  he  dcigncth  to  climb  at ! 
Had  England  a  hierarchy  formed  all  of  wits, 

Whom,  but  Sydney,  would  England  proclaim  as  it  primatf  ? 


94  NO   SPORTSMAN. 

« 
"And  long  may  he  flourish,  frank,  merry,  and  brave, 
A  Horace  to  feast  with,  a  Pascal  to  read  ! 
Wliile  he  laughs,  all  is  safe ;  but,  when  Sydney  grows  grave, 
We  shall  then  think  the  Church  is  in  danger  indeed." 

Tliere  are  one  or  two  notices  of  Smith  in  the  Nodes  Amhrosi- 
ance,  where  his  old  Edinburgh  friends  took  good  care  of  him. 
Tickler  pronounces  him  "  a  formidable  enemy  to  pomposity  and 
pretension.  No  man  can  wear  a  big  wig  comfortably  in  his  pres- 
ence ;  the  absurdity  of  such  enormous  fizzle  is  felt ;  and  the  dig- 
nitary would  fain  exchange  all  that  horsehair  for  a  few  scattered 
locks  of  another  animal."  To  which  Christopher  North  sagely 
replies,  "  He  would  make  a  lively  interlocutor  at  a  Noctes." 
Sydney  is  introduced  again,  in  1831,  when  thei'e  was  talk  of 
making  him  a  Bishop.  North  thinks  that,  at  the  first  vacancy,  he 
should  be  made  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's,  as  a  witty  successor,  of 
course,  of  Swift.  Tickler  suggests,  that  we  should  then  have  the 
charges  in  rhyme,  e.  g. : — 

"  Reverend  brethren,  fish  not,  shoot  not. 
Reel  not,  quadrille  not,  fiddle  not,  flute  not. 
But  of  all  things,  it  is  my  dcvoutest  desire,  sirs. 
That  the  parson  on  Sunday  should  dine  with  the  Squire,  sirs.* 

In  1838,  there  was  a  hvely  notice  of  "  the  Reverend  Sydney 
Smith,"  in   Eraser's  "  Gallery  of   Literary  Characters,"  with  a 

*  Smith,  by  the  way,  was  himself  no  sportsman.  When  he  settled  in  the 
country  he  formed  a  resolution  never  to  shoot,  and  gave  these  conclusive 
reasons :  "  First,  because  I  found,  on  trying  at  Lord  Grey's,  that  the  birds 
seemed  to  consider  the  muzzle  of  my  gun  as  their  safest  position ;  secondly, 
because  I  never  could  help  shutting  my  eyes  wlien  I  fired  my  gun,  so  was  not 
likely  to  improve  ;  and  thirdly,  because,  if  you  do  shoot,  the  squire  and  the 
poacher  both  consider  you  as  their  natural  eii<7.my,  and  I  thought  it  more 
clerical  to  be  at  peace  with  both."  (Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  133.)  He 
v/as  quite  too  careless  a  rider  for  the  diase,  and  had  fiir  too  little  patience  for 
the  angle.  Dancing  seems  to  have  had  a  peculiar  efixjct  upon  him.  When 
his  pupil  was  under  his  charge  at  Edinburgh,  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Beach : 
"  Michael  takes  a  lesson  in  dancing  every  day.  I  get  him,  now  and  then,  to 
show  me  a  step  or  two.  I  cannot  bear  the  repetition  of  this  spectacle  every 
day,  as  it  never  fails  to  throw  me  into  a  fit  of  laugliing  little  short  of  suffoca- 
tion." (Memoir,  4th  Eng.  ed.,  p.  25.)  Of  theatres,  oratorios  and  the  like, 
he  was  always  impatient. 


GRAVITY   AND   LICENSE.  95 

wicked  caricature,  by  Maclise,  wliicli,  however,  taken  with  the 
other  engraved  portraits,  may  help,  materially,  to  a  knowledge  of 
the  personal  appearance  of  the  man. 

Much  has  been  said  concerning  the  irreverence  of  Sydney  Smith, 
and  his  incapacity,  in  consequence  of  the  social  freedom,  the  license 
of  the  intellect,  which  he  indulged  in,  to  discharge  the  sober  duties 
of  the  Church,  As  there  is,  apparently,  some  colour  for  this  objec- 
tion, it  may  be  worth  wliile  to  look  into  its  nature.  It  is  undoubtedly 
right  that  a  clergyman  should  be  required  to  make  some  sacrifices 
of  matters  allowable  enough  in  themselves,  to  sustain  the  distinct 
professional  character  of  his  calling.  The  world  exacts  some- 
thing from  the  lawyer,  the  physician,  and  the  merchant,  on  this 
point.  These  classes  are  bound  under  various  social  penalties, 
to  sustain,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  conventional  propriety  and  deco- 
rum. The  pleader  is  expected  by  liis  client  to  be  calm  and  col- 
lected, and  play  no  mountebank  tricks  in  court.  A  physician  who 
indulges  in  any  great  levity  of  manner  should  not  be  disappointed 
at  the  slender  list  of  his  patients.  The  great  merchant  is  a  grave 
man,  for  he  is  intrusted  with  the  millions  of  other  people,  and  pecu- 
niary responsibility  of  this  kind  must  needs  occupy  his  attention 
seriously.  In  a  higher  degree  and  to  a  greater  extent,  the  voca- 
tion of  the  divine  demands  and  inspires  solemnity.  There  is,  how- 
ever, parallel  with  all  these  requirements,  a  natural,  healthy,  free 
development  of  the  individual  man.  Gravity  is  a  good  thing  in 
its  place,  but  it  may  be  asked  for  in  excess.  The  cheap  gravity 
of  the  fool,  whose  stagnant  countenance  is  the  index  of  the  un- 
stirred mini  within,  may  be  purchased  in  every  market;  and  very 
frequently  finds  pui-chasers  who  pay  dear  for  the  commodity. 
Gravity  may  be  the  cloak  of  hypocrisy ;  it  is  a  garment  easily 
made  up,  and  its  wear  deceives  many.  Get  the  genuine  article, 
and  it -is  invaluable.  "There  is,"  says  Doctor  South,  "the  silence 
of  an  Archimedes  in  the  study  of  a  problem,  and  the  stillness  of  a 
sow  at  her  wash."     Lest  we  confound  exliibitions  so  diverse,  we 


96  WIT   AND    CHARACTEE. 

must  look  uiulerneath  to  the  elements  of  character.  The  man, 
after  all,  is  the  basis  of  the  worth,  and  as  it  is  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  what  jSTature  has  implanted,  care  must  be  taken  not  to 
thwart  or  defeat  her  movements.  She,  the  mighty  mother,  will 
assert  herself  rightfully,  and  overrule  or  be  revenged  upon  the 
conventionalisms.  If  your  grave  lawyer  does  not  possess  liveliness 
or  quickness  of  mind,  he  will  not  see  promptly  into  your  case,  or 
will  hazard  it  where  readiness  is  required,  in  the  brief,  dramatic 
action  of  the  court.  The  physician  should  have  great  vivacity  of 
perception,  for  he  has  frequently  but  a  moment  to  choose  between 
life  and  death.  The  merchant  needs  a  nimble  understanding,  else 
his  staid  formulas  of  trade  Avill  leave  him  in  poverty.  Is  it  any 
ground  of  objection  with  an  intelligent  mind,  that  the  lawyer  is  a 
man  of  humour,  that  he  makes  an  excellent  after-dinner  speech, 
that  he  enjoys  a  di-amatic  entertainment ;  that  the  physician  con- 
trasts the  pretensions  of  mtellect  with  his  knowledge  of  physical 
necessities,  and  laughs  loudly  and  frequently  over  the  incongruities 
brought  to  his  knowledge ;  or  that  the  merchant,  out  of  his  count- 
ing-house, makes  himself  as  jocose  and  agreeable  as  it  is  possible 
for  him  to  be?  To  state  the  objection  is  to  refute  it.  How  is  the 
case,  then,  different  with  a  clergyman  ?  Does  wit  incapacitate  him 
for  the  work  of  a  Christian  minister?  Because  he  may  be  said, 
unlike  the  lawyer,  physician,  or  merchant,  to  be  always  practising 
his  profession,  is  he,  on  that  account,  never  to  relax  the  muscles 
of  his  face,  or  shake  the  midriff  of  his  neighbour  by  laughter-com- 
pelling jest  ?  An  Apostle  has  borne  Ids  testimony  against  dulhiess 
in  conversation,  by  recommending  that  speech  be  seasoned  with 
salt.  No  one  can  reasonably  question  tlie  good  gifts  of  wit  and 
humour,  in  their  beneficence  to  one  in  the  clerical  relation,  or  in 
any  other.  It  becomes,  then,  a  question  of  degree,  when  Sydney 
Smith  is  arraigned  as  too  great  a  jester  for  the  pulpit.  But  how 
can  this  question  of  moderation  be  decided  ?  Wlio  shall  set  the 
limit  where  wit  transcends  decorum  and  commences  to  be  anti- 
clerical ?     If  one  jest  or  a  dozen  are  peraiissible,  why  not  twenty 


CLERICAL   WITS.  97 

or  thirty  ?  Or,  is  it  to  be  regulated  by  time  ?  If  the  latter,  the 
standard  is  unequal,  for  your  Sydney  Smith  will  let  off  a  hundred 
witticisms  while  your  dullard  is  feebly  labouring  at  one,  and 
voluble  nonsense  will  triumph  when  wise  meditation  is  silenced. 
At  what  precise  moment  must  the  wrinkled  grin  be  smoothed  down 
into  the  platitude  of  propriety  ?  Is  the  sin  in  the  strength  of  the 
article  ?  Is  a  smile  orthodox,  and  is  a  laugh  heretical  ?  May  a 
good  man,  without  violation  of  his  goodness,  cause  his  companion 
to  shake  in  his  chair,  with  gentle  titillations,  while  it  becomes  sin- 
ful to  inflict  the  acuter  displays  of  wit,  the  inextinguishable  laughter 
of  the  immortals.  Gentle  dullness,  we  know  on  good  poetical 
authority,  ever  loves  a  joke,  but  must  all  jokes  be  conformed  to 
the  standard  of  dullness  ?  "  You  are  always  aiming  at  wit,"  said 
some  one  of  the  class  of  objectors  to  Charles  Lamb.  "  It  is  better, 
at  any  rate,"  was  the  retort,  "  than  always  aiming  at  dullness."  It 
was  in  reference  to  the  same  race  of  critics  that  the  eminent  divine. 
Dr.  Samuel  Clarke,  being  once  engaged  in  a  game  of  romps,  seeing 
a  mere  formalist  approaching,  exclaimed,  "  Let  us  give  over,  there's 
a  fool  coming."  The  common  sense  of  the  world  sets  any  objec- 
tion at  rest.  Practically,  we  have  never  known  any  one  to  possess 
wit  and  despise  it.  On  the  contrary,  we  have  seen  very  pious 
clergymen  exult  at  the  perpetration  of  very  feeble  jokes.  "We  have 
observed  them  also,  at  a  loss  for  a  witticism,  run  to  the  Bible  for  a 
text.  Indeed,  they  frequently  fall  into  the  error  of  a  familiar  and 
irreverent  use  of  Scripture  texts  in  conversation  and  on  pub- 
lic occasions,  from  lack  of  that  very  culture  of  wit  and  literature 
which  would  place  other  and  more  appropriate  weapons  at  their 
disposal. 

There  were  clerical  wits  before  Smith  in  the  English  Church ; 
Latimer,  with  his  rough,  homely,  vigorous  way ;  the  quaint  hu- 
mourist. Dr.  Thomas  Fuller,  the  Church  historian,  whose  incessant 
quips  and  cranks  were  always  subservient  to  his  much  reading  and 
a  sound,  healthy  understanding ;  Echard,  whose  "  Letters  on  the 
Grounds  and  Occasions  of  the  Contempt  of  the  Clergy,"  were  the 

5 


98  SERIOUSNESS. 

godfathers  of  Sydney  Smith's  papers  on  clerical  topics ;  the  rich, 
mellow  wit  of  South,  in  his  pure-toned,  eloquent  discourses ;  the 
scornful  mood  of  Swift ;  the  pulpit  attitudinarianism  of  Sterne. 
Some  of  the  sermons  of  these  men  must  have  tempted  the  laughter 
of  their  congregations  ;  a  natural  ti-ibute  to  honest  convictions  of 
truth  wliich  would  seldom  be  tolerated  within  modern  church  walls. 
Much  might  be  said  in  defence  of  the  pulpit  wit  of  South,  and  his 
example  might  be  commended  as  a  resource  to  preachers  who  can- 
not afford,  at  this  time  of  day,  to  lose  a  single  potent  instrument 
of  arousing  the  susceptibility  of  their  hearers.     Sydney  Smith, 
howevei',  does  not  ask  this  vindication  or  indulgence.     His  pub- 
lished sermons  are  as  solemn,  as  free  from  unseemly  jesting,  as 
those  of  the  gravest  and  dullest  of  his  brethren.    He  drew  the  line 
distinctly  between  levity  and   sanctity ;    never   confounding   the 
choir  of  St.  Paul's  with  the  dining-room  of  Holland  House.     His 
friend,  Mrs.  Austin,  when  she  first  heard  him  preach  at  the  Lon- 
don Cathedral,  confesses  that  she  had  "  some  misgivings  as  to  the 
effect  which  that  well-known  face  and  voice,  ev^r  associated  with 
wit  and  mirth,  might  have  upon  her,  even  in  the  sacred  place. 
Never  (she  adds)  were  misgivings  more  quickly  and  entirely  dis- 
sipated.    The  moment  he  appeared  in  the  pulpit,  all  the  weight  of 
his  duty,  all  the  authority  of  his  office,  were  written  on  his  counte- 
nance ;  and  without  a  particle  of  affectation  (of  which  he  was  in- 
capable), his  whole  demeanor  bespoke  the  gravity  of  his  purpose."* 
This  was  the  habitual  effect  of  his  ministerial  duties,  and  it  might 
have  been  looked  for.     Nor  was  this  gravity  confined  to  the  pul- 
oit.     Afler  leaving  one  of  Rogers'  breakfasts,  with  Sydney,  Moore 
tells  us,  "  I  found  him  (as  I  have  often  done  before)  change  at 
once  from  the  gay,  uproarious  way,  into  as    solemn,  grave,  and 
austere  a  person  as  any  bench  of  judges  or  bishops  could  supply : 
this  1  rather  think  his  natural  character." f     The  topics  of  these 
wits  were  not  always  the  lightest,  as  another  striking   entry  in 
Moore's  Diary  witnesses.     It  was  in  London,  in  June,  1831: — > 
*  Memoir,  p.  273.  t  Moore's  Diary,  May  27,  1826- 


THE   CLERICAL   CHARACui^l.  99 

*'  Walked  with  Sydney  Smith ;  told  me  his  age ;  turned  sixty. 
Asked  me  how  I  felt  about  dying.  Answered  that  if  my  mind 
was  but  at  ease  about  the  comfort  of  those  I  left  behind,  I  should 
leave  the  world  without  much  regret,  having  passed  a  very  happy 
life,  and  enjoyed  (as  much,  perhaps,  as  ever  man  did  yet)  all  that 
is  enjoyable  in  it ;  the  only  single  thing  I  have  had  to  complain  of 
being  want  of  money.  I  could,  therefore,  die  with  the  same  words 
that  Jortin  died,  '  I  have  had  enough  of  everything.'  "  What  the 
reply  of  the  divine  was  we  are  not  informed. 

True  wit  is  a  precious  commodity,  the  distillation  of  a  generous, 
richly-gifted  nature,  and  such  a  disposition  must  be  founded  on 
seriousness.  There  is  a  Hght,  frivolous  wit,  a  melancholy,  scoffing 
wit ;  but  these  do  not  belong  to  the  nature  to  which  we  allude. 
We  hold  it  to  be  utterly  impossible  that  a  man  should  possess  the 
honest  mirth  of  Sydney  Smith  and  be  insensible  to  the  gravities 
of  hfe  ;  that  he  should  penetrate  to  the  heart  of  social  abuses,  of 
conventionalisms,  of  cant  of  every  kind  with  a  loving  eye  to  the 
real  welfare  of  his  race,  and  should  want  at  the  same  time  sym- 
pathy with  sadness,  tears  for  grief,  or  a  sacred  regard  for  religious 
obhgations. 

What  is  thus  true  between  man  and  man  does  not  become  false 
when  a  clergyman  is  the  subject.  It  is  only  where  a  low,  mjuri- 
ous  view  of  the  clerical  character  is  taken,  that  there  can  be  any 
misconception  of  the  matter.  It  is  as  absurd  to  say  that  a  minis- 
ter of  any  religious  denomination  shall  not  laugh,  and  that  loudly 
and  frequently  too,  if  he  please,  because  his  duty  is  to  worship  and 
to  pray,  as  it  would  be  to  forbid  a  healthy-lunged  layman  joining 
in  the  litanies  of  the  church  on  account  of  his  gay  temperament, 
and  his  faculty  of  enjoying  himself  prodigiously  at  festive  enter- 
tainments. 

There  is  a  popular  delusion  among  good  men  on  the  matter. 
The  clergyman,  whatever  his  natural  disposition  may  be,  is  expected 
by  many  people,  not  accustomed  to  get  to  the  heart  of  a  subject,  to 
wear  always  the  externals  of  piety  and  to  relax  nothing  from  the 


lOO  USES   OF   WIT. 

rigours  of  a  ghastly  white  cravat,  an  unbending,  facial  muscle,  and 
a  stoHd,  glazed  eye.  There  is  consequently  a  struggle  of  nature 
against  him.  Humanity  keeps  at  a  distance  from  him ;  and  hu- 
manity, in  the  end,  will  have  the  advantage  over  him ;  for  it  is  too 
much  for  any  one  man  or  any  set  of  men.  If  a  clergyman  assumes 
a  conventional  dress  and  manner,  he  invites  and  is  pretty  sure  to 
receive  from  the  world  a  conventional  treatment.  A  thousand  so- 
cial hypocrisies  start  up  to  meet  him.  His  sanctities  are  admitted 
as  a  matter  of  fashion ;  it  is  respectable  to  speak  well  of  the  cloth, 
as  it  is  termed,  but  how  is  the  influence  of  the  man  within  the  gar- 
ment abated !  In  another  way,  also  occasional  and  too  frequent 
injury  is  sustained.  Professional  decorum,  once  established,  be- 
comes a  mask  which  it  is  easier  to  wear  than  to  challenge  the  re- 
wards of  holiness  by  practising  rigorously  its  duties ;  the  genial, 
active  life  of  mental  and  personal  industry,  of  courage,  liberality, 
and  honour ;  mingling  freely  with  the  world,  at  once  in  it  and 
above  it ;  the  true  friendship  of  publicans  and  sinners,  of  the  poor 
and  the  contemned. 

It  is  to  be  considered,  in  illustration  of  these  remarks,  in  the 
case  of  Sydney  Smith,  how  greatly  his  wit  enlarged  his  influence 
with  the  world  in  the  cause  of  truth  ;  how  it  pointed  and  feathered 
the  arrows  which  were  to  carry  conviction  to  dull  understandings ; 
how  it  was  constantly  and  uniformly  exerted  in  levelling  oppres- 
sion and  injustice  ;  how  much  it  added  to  the  power  of  the  great 
practical  reformer.  We  may  add  that  it  sometimes  gave  him  an 
authority  in  rebuking  infidelity  itself,  where  a  heavier  weapon 
would  have  failed.  At  a  dinner  once  at  Holland  House  he  met  a 
French  savant  who  took  it  upon  himself  to  annoy  the  best  disposed 
of  the  company  by  a  variety  of  free-thinking  speculations.  He 
ended  by  avowing  himself  a  materiahst.  "  Very  good  soup  this," 
struck  in  Mr.  Smith.  "  Oui,  Monsieur,  c'est  excellente."  "  Pray, 
sir,"  was  the  retort  which  for  that  time  and  place  was  worth  a 
library  of  argument,  "  do  you  beheve  in  a  cook  ?"* 
*  Memoir  of  Rev.  Richard  Barham,  p.  105. 


ANTI-INFIDELITY.  101 

The  Rev.  Sydney  Smith  -was  sound  at  heart  on  this  subject. 
When  he  saw  some  signs  of  unseemly  levity,  as  he  thought,  in  an 
article*  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  he  wrote  to  the  editor,  Jeftrey, 
rebuking  the  license  as  uijurious,  by  its  indiscretion,  and  rendering 
it  "  perilous  to  a  clergyman  in  particular  to  be  concerned  in  the 
Review."  Ten  years  later  he  wu-ote  again  to  Jeffrey — "I  must 
beg  the  favour  of  you  to  be  explicit  on  one  point.  Do  you  mean  to 
take  care  that  the  Review  shall  not  profess  or  encourage  infidel 
principles  ?  Unless  this  is  the  case  I  must  absolutely  give  up 
all  thoughts  of  connectmg  myself  with  it."t 

Sydney  Smith  must  thus  be  absolved  from  the  charge  of  employ- 
ing his  wit  to  the  injury  of  sound  religious  principle.  As  a  matter 
of  taste  he  sometimes,  it  must  be  admitted,  pushed  his  jest  to  an 
extremity  with  professional  ecclesiastical  arrangements,  and,  in  a 
few  instances,  as  in  his  description  of  Rogers'  dining-room,  with 
"a  blaze  of  light  above,  and  below  nothing  but  darkness  and 
gnashing   of  teeth,"{  may  be   rebuked  by  the  censure  of   Dr 

*  It  was  an  article  in  the  Review  for  Jan.,  1808,  making  sport  of  a  heavy 
and  absurd  epic  poem,  by  Charles  Hoyle,  of  Cambridge,  on  the  departure  of 
the  Israelites  from  Egypt,  entitled  Exodus,  an  example  of  the  not  uncommon 
delusion  of  crude  imitators  of  Homer  and  Milton.  The  article  follows  one 
of  Sydney  Smith  on  Methodism,  which  at  least  to  those  who  winced  under 
it,  would  appear  far  more  reprehensible  than  speaking  lightly  of  Pharaoh  and 
the  jugglers  of  his  court.  Smith's  objection  to  the  latter  article  showed 
his  sensitiveness  as  a  wit  as  well  as  his  sense  of  the  proprieties.  "  The  lev- 
ities," he  says,  "  are  ponderous  and  vulgar,  as  well  as  indiscreet."  Scripture 
was  one  thing  in  the  eyes  of  Sydney  Smith,  and  the  Methodism  of  the  begin 
ning  of  the  centuiy  quite  another.  His  treatment  of  what  he  considered  the 
eccentricities  of  the  latter  was  vigorous  and  unsparing.  In  readmg  his  reply 
to  Mr.  John  Styles,  who  ventured  a  retort,  we  feel  that  it  is  "excellent  to 
have  a  giant's  strength,"  and  perhaps,  "  tyrannous  to  use  it  like  a  giant." 

t  Letter  141. 

J  Dyce's  Table  Talk  of  Rogers.  Rogers  arrays  the  poetical  authoritica 
on  the  distribution  of  light,  in  a  note  to  his  "Epistle  to  a  Friend,"  citing 
Homer,  Lucretius,  Virgil,  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and  Milton.  A  Quarterly 
Reviewer  remarks  u])on  this  :  "  There  are  few  precepts  of  taste  that  are  no. 
practised  in  Mr.  Rogers'  establishment,  as  well  as  recommended  in  his  works ; 
but  he  has  hit  upon  a  novel  and  ingenious  mode  of  lighting  a  dining-room. 
Lamps  above,  or  candles  or  the  table,  there  arc  none ;  all  the  light  is  reflected 


102  PEOFESSIONAL   JESTING. 

Johnson  on  the  employment  of  "  idle  and  indecent  applications  of 
sentences  taken  from  the  Scriptures ;  a  mode  of  merriment  which 
a  good  man  dreads  for  its  profaneness,  and  a  witty  man  disdains 
for  its  easmess  and  vulgarity."*  Another  is  readily  pardonable, 
the  oft-mentioned  reply  to  Landseer's  request  that  he  should  sit  to 
him  for  his  picture  — "  Is  thy  servant  a  dog  that  he  should  do  this 
thing  ?"  There  is  another  of  the  same  class  attributed  to  him  on 
receiving,  at  the  time  of  the  Pennsylvania  grievance,  a  visiter  who 
congratulated  him  on  his  happy  circumstances.  "  Yes,"  said 
Sydney,  in  the  words  of  St.  Paul,  "  I  would  that  you  were  almost 
and  altogether  such  as  I  am,  except  thc«e  bonds."  Sydney  Smith, 
however,  appears  seldom  to  have  transgressed  in  this  direction. 
The  defence  of  a  friendly  writer  on  this  subject  must  be  admitted 
in  his  favour.  "  Some  of  the  happiest  jests  of  Smith  were  ecclesi- 
astical. But  such  sallies  were  too  professional  to  be  profane. 
They  seemed  to  rebound  upon  himself,  or  they  played  about  his 
order:  they  certainly  scorched  nothing.  If  there  was  satire  in 
them,  it  was  directed  only  at  hypocrisy  or  corruption.  If  he  could 
lightly  touch  the  terrene  and  external  part  of  religion — its  secular- 
ized institutions — its  drowsy  dignitaries  ;  he  paid  lowliest  obeisance 
(wherever  he  could  discern  it)  to  its  heavenly  spirit.  He  could 
play  with  the  tassel  of  his  cushion ;  never  with  the  leaves  of  his 
Bible."t 

In  one  or  two  instances  there  is  a  freedom  of  expression  in- 
dulged in  by  Sydney  Smith,  allowable  perhaps,  among  the  liberties 
of  social  life  of  Europe,  where  conversation  and  literature  are  less 

by  Titians,  Reynolds,  &c.,  from  lamps  projecting  out  of  the  frames  of  the 
I)ictures  and  screened  from  the  company."     (Quar.  Rev.,  Iv.,  457.) 

*  Life  of  Pope.  The  witty  Dr.  Thomas  Fuller  had  anticipated  Johnson  iu 
this  remark.  In  the  chapter  "  Of  Jesting,"  in  his  Holy  State,  he  says  :  "Jest 
not  with  the  two-edged  sword  of  God's  word.  Will  nothing  please  thee  to 
wash  thy  hands  in  but  the  font  3  or  to  drink  healths  in  but  the  church  chalice  ? 
And  know,  the  whole  art  is  learnt  at  the  first  admission,  and  profane  jests 
will  come  without  calling." 

t  An  admirable  article  oc  the  Life  of  Sydney  Smith  in  the  British  Quar- 
terly Review  for  July,  1851 


CHARACTERISTICS.  103 

restncted  in  these  respects  tlian  in  America.  Addressing  Lady 
Holland  in  1811  in  a  note,  in  a  reply  to  an  invitation  to  dinner, 
his  witticism  seems  bold  as  addressed  to  a  lady ;  satirical  person 
ally,  considering  the  antecedents  of  his  honourable  hostess : — 

"  How  very  odd,  dear  Lady  Holland,  to  ask  me  to  dine  with 
you  on  Sunday,  the  9  th,  when  I  am  coming  to  stay  with  you  from 
the  5th  to  the  12th!  It  is  like  giving  a  gentleman  an  assignation 
for  Wednesday,  when  you  are  going  to  marry  him  on  the  pre- 
ceding Sunday — an  attempt  to  combine  the  stimulus  of  gallantry 
with  the  security  of  connubial  relations.  I  do  not  propose  to  be 
guilty  of  the  slightest  infidelity  to  you  while  I  am  at  Holland 
House,  except  you  dine  in  town ;  and  then  it  will  not  be  infidelity, 
but  spirited  recrimination.  Ever  the  sincere  and  affectionate 
friend  of  Lady  Holland." 

These,  however,  if  pressed  as  defects,  would  be  but  slight 
blemishes  in  a  lifetime  passed  in  kindliness,*  charity,  truthfulness 
and  honour.  If  his  wit  or  humour  occasionally  appear  in  excess 
in  his  memoirs,  it  is  to  be  remembered  how  largely  these  relaxa- 
tions of  his  life  have  been  chronicled,  and  that  aE  the  while  he 
was  pursuing  a  serious,  noble,  useful  career.  The  jests  of  Sydney 
Smith  should  be  passed  to  his  credit,  as  supererogatory  gifts  to  the 
world,  contributed  after  he  had  perfonned  the  usual  duties  of  a 
valuable  man.  ]Men  of  worth  and  integi-ity  are  always  to  be  hon- 
oured, but  how  little  would  we  give  for  the  table-talk  of  most  of 
them,  in  comparison  with  that  of  this  ingenious  social  benefactor. 

Sydney  Smith  was  not,  indeed,  a  profound  spiritualist ;  he  was 

*  There  is  a  rare  instance  of  forbearance  for  a  wit,  which  comes  to  light  in 
one  of  Sydney  Smith's  letters  to  Lady  Holland,  in  1839:    "I  have  written 

against one  of  the  cleverest  pamphlets  I  ever  read,  which  I  think  would 

cover and  him  with  ridicule.     At  least  it  made  me  laugh  very  much  in 

reading  it ;  and  there  I  stood,  with  the  printer's  devil,  and  the  real  devil  close 
to  me ;  and  then  I  said,  '  After  all,  this  is  very  funny,  and  very  well  written, 
but  it  will  .give  great  pain  to  people  who  have  been  very  kind  and  good  tc 
me  through  life;  and  what  can  I  do  to  show  my  sense  of  that  kindness, 
if  it  is  not  by  flinging  this  pamphlet  into  the  fire  V  So  I  flung  it  in,  and 
there  was  an  end      My  sense  of  ill-usage  remains,  of  course,  the  same." 


104  THE   HUMOURIST. 

not  a  great  philosopher ;  there  have  been  deeper  thinkers,  more 
earnest  divines.  He  was  a  dogmatist  from  his  impulses  and  posi- 
tion in  society.  Fortunately  his  nature  was  broad  and  liberal,  and 
his  lot  was  cast  among  whigs  and  reformers.  He  was  for  expe- 
diency ;  but  his  expediency  implied  courage  for  the  right  and  true. 
It  was  not  vulgar  temporizing,  but  an  enlarged  conformity  to  the 
well-being  of  society. 

It  is  for  few  to  round  the  outer  circle,  broken  as  it  is,  of  human 
excellence.  Sydney  Smith,  like  most  of  the  best  of  men,  was  but 
a  parcel  man.  But  how  complete  within  his  hmits,  how  perfect 
in  his  segment !  He  took  a  healthy  view  of  life,  as  it  must  prac- 
tically come  home  to  the  greater  part  of  the  world ;  saw  its  neces- 
sities, and  complied  with  its  duties,  while  he  embroidered  this 
plainness  with  his  delightful  humours. 

Such  men  should  be  cultivated  at  the  present  day  from  their 
rarity,  for  modern  levelling  is  not  favourable  to  their  growth.  They 
enlarge  the  freedom  of  life,  add  to  its  faculties  as  well  as  its  enjoy- 
ments, clear  the  intellectual  and  warm  the  moral  atmosphere. 
Characters  there  are  enough,  excrescences  on  society,  oddities,  in 
the  sense  of  perversions  of  human  nature,  anomalous  churls, 
crude,  hard-hearted  and  repulsive ;  but  there  are  few  such  illus- 
trations of  the  kindly  powers  of  life  as  this  brave  humourist — the 
man  of  generous  humour  and  humours. 


SELECTIONS. 


PASSAGES  FROM  THE  EDINBURGH  REVIEW. 


DR.   parr's    SPITAL    SERMON.* 


Whoever  lias  had  the  good  fortune  to  see  Dr.  Parr's  wig, 
must  have  observed,  that  while  it  trespasses  a  little  on  the  orthodox 
magnitude  of  perukes  in  the  anterior  parts,  it  scorns  even  Episco- 
pal limits  behind,  and  swells  out  into  boundless  convexity  of  frizz, 
the  fieya  davfxa  of  barbers,  and  the  terror  of  the  literary  world. 
After  the  manner  of  his  wig,  the  doctor  has  constructed  his  ser- 
mon, giving  us  a  discourse  of  no  common  length,  and  subjoining 
an  immeasurable  mass  of  notes,  which  appear  to  concern  every 
learned  man,  and  almost  every  unlearned  man  since  the  beginning 

of  the  world.f 

*****♦♦♦ 

The  style  is  such  as  to  give  a  general  impression  of  heaviness 
to  the  whole  sermon.  The  Doctor  is  never  simple  and  natural  for 
a  single  instant.  Everything  smells  of  the  rhetorician.  He  never 
appears  to  forget  himself,  or  to  be  hurried  by  his  subject  into 
obvious  language.  Every  expression  seems  to  be  the  result  of 
artifice  and  intention ;  and  as  to  the  worthy  dedicatees,  the  Lord- 
Mayor  and  Aldermen,  unless  the  sermon  be  done  into  English  by 
a  person  of  honotir,  they  may,  perhaps,  be  flattered  by  the  Doc- 
tor's politeness,  but  they  can  never  be  much  edified  by  liis  meaning. 

*  Ed.  Eev.,  Oct.,  1802.  Spital  Sermon,  preached  at  Christ  Church  upon 
Easter-Tuesday,  April  1.5,  1800.  To  which  are  added,  Notes  by  Samuel 
Parr,  LL.U. 

t  In  the  edition  of  Parr's  Works,  the  sermon  occupies  fifty  pages  of  pica 
text ;  tlie  notes  fill  t\vo  hundred  and  twelve  in  brevier. 


108  A    PRANCING   INDENTURE. 

Dr.  Parr  seems  to  think  that  eloquence  consists,  not  in  exuberance 
of  beautiful  images — not  in  simple  and  sublime  conceptions — not 
in  the  feelings  of  the  passions  ;  but  in  a  studious  arrrangement  of 
sonorous,  exotic,  and  sesquipedal  words :  a  very  ancient  error, 
which  corrupts  the  style  of  young,  and  wearies  the  patience  of 
sensible  men.  In  some  of  his  combinations  of  words  the  Doctor 
is  singularly  unhappy.  We  have  the  din  of  superficial  cavillers, 
the  prancings  of  giddy  ostentation,  flattering  vanity,  hissing  scorn, 
dank  clod,  &c.,  &;c.,  &c.  The  following  intrusion  of  a  technical 
'vord  into  a  pathetic  description  renders  the  whole  passage  almost 
ludicrous : — 

"  Within  a  few  days,  mute  was  the  tongue  that  uttered  these  celestial 
sounds,  and  the  hand  which  signed  your  indenture  lay  cold  and  motionless  in 
the  dark  and  dreary  chambers  of  death." 

Dr.  Parr,  in  speaking  of  the  indentures  of  the  hospital,  a  sub- 
ject (as  we  should  have  thought)  little  calculated  for  rhetorical 
panegyric,  says  of  them : — 

"  If  the  writer  of  whom  I  am  speaking  had  perused,  as  I  have,  your  in- 
dentures, and  your  rules,  he  would  haA'e  found  in  them  seriousness  without 
austerity,  earnestness  without  extravagance,  good  sense  without  the  trickeries 
of  art,  good  language  without  the  trappings  of  rhetoric,  and  the  firmness  of 
conscious  worth,  rather  than  the  prancings  of  giddy  ostentation." 

The  latter  member  of  this  eloge  would  not  be  wholly  unintel- 
ligible, if  applied  to  a  spirited  coach-horse  ;  but  we  have  never  yet 
witnessed  the  phenomenon  of  a  prancing  indenture. 


DR.  langford's  anniversary  sermon  of  the  royal  hu- 
mane  SOCIETY.* 

An  accident  which  happened  to  the  gentleman  engaged  in  re- 
viewing this  sermon  proves,  in  the  most  striking  manner,  the  im- 
portance of  this  charity  for  restoring  to  life  persons  in  whom  the 
vital  power  is  suspended.  He  was  discovered,  with  Dr.  Langford's 
discourse  lying  open  before  him,  in  a  state  of  the  most  profound 
sleep  ;  from  which  he  could  not,  by  any  means,  be  awakened  for  a 
great  length  of  time.  By  attending,  however,  to  the  rules  pre- 
scribed by  the  Humane  Society,  flinging  in  the  smoke  of  tobacco, 

*  Anniversary  Sermon  of  the  Eoyal  Humane  Society.  By  W.  Langfard, 
D.D.     Ed.  Rev.  Oct.  1802 


TRAVELLERS.  109 

applying  hot  flannels,  and  carefully  removing  the  discourse  itself 
to  a  greit  distance,  the  critic  was  restored  to  his  disconsolate 
brothers. 

The  only  account  he  could  give  of  himself  was,  that  he  remem- 
bers reading  on,  regidarly,  till  he  came  to  the  following  pathetic 
description  of  a  drowned  tradesman ;  beyond  which  he  recollects 
nothujg. 

"  But  to  the  individual  himself,  as  a  man,  let  us  add  the  interruption  to  all 
the  temporal  business  in  which  his  interest  was  engaged.  To  him  indeed, 
now  apparently  lost,  the  world  is  as  nothing :  but  it  seldom  happens,  tliut 
man  can  live  for  himself  alone  :  society  parcels  out  its  concerns  in  various 
connections  ;  and  from  one  head  issue  waters  which  run  down  in  many  chan- 
nels. The  spring  being  suddenly  cut  off,  what  confusion  must  follow  in  the 
Streams  which  have  flowed  from  its  source  ?  It  may  be,  that  all  the  expecta- 
tions reasonably  raised  of  approaching  prosperity,  to  those  who  have  embark- 
ed in  the  same  occupation,  may  at  once  disappear ;  and  the  important  inter- 
change of  commercial  faith  be  broken  off,  before  it  could  be  brought  to  any 
advantageous  conclusion." 

This  extract  will  suffice  for  the  style  of  the  sermon.     The  char 

ity  itself  is  above  all  praise. 


BOOKS    OF   TRAVEL.f 

Of  all  the  species  of  travels,  that  which  has  moral  observation 
for  its  object  is  the  most  liable  to  error,  and  has  the  greatest  diffi- 
culties to  overcome,  before  it  can  arrive  at  excellence.  Stones, 
and  roots,  and  leaves,  are  subjects  which  may  exercise  the  under- 
standing without  rousing  the  passions.  A  mineralogical  traveller 
will  hardly  fall  fouler  upon  the  granite  and  the  feldspar  of  other 
countries  than  his  own  ;  a  botanist  will  not  conceal  its  non-descripts ; 
and  an  agricultural  tourist  will  faithfully  detail  the  average  crop 
per  acre ;  but  the  traveller  who  observes  on  the  manners,  habits, 
and  institutions  of  other  countries,  must  have  emancipated  his  mind 
from  the  extensive  and  powerful  dominions  of  association,  must 
have  extinguished  the  agreeable  and  deceitful  feelings  of  national 
vanity,  and  cultivated  that  patient  humility  which  builds  general 
inference's  only  upon  the  repetition  of  individual  facts.    Everything 

t  From  a  revicM  of  "  Lettrcs  sur  I'AngleteiTC.  Par  J.  Fievee."  Ed.  Rev. 
April,  1803. 


110  CAUSES    OF   ERROR, 

he  sees  shocks  s  Jtie  passion  or  flatters  it ;  and  he  is  perpetually 
seduced  to  distort  facts,  so  as  to  render  them  agreeable  to  his  sys- 
tem and  Iiis  feeUngs  !  Books  of  travels  are  now  published  in  such 
vast  abundance,  that  it  may  not  be  useless,  perhaps,  to  state  a  few 
of  the  reasons  why  their  value  so  commonly  happens  to  be  in  the 
inverse  ratio  of  then-  number. 

1st.  Travels  are  bad,  from  a  want  of  opportunity  for  observation 
in  those  who  write  them.  If  the  sides  of  a  building  are  to  be 
measured,  and  the  number  of  its  windows  to  be  counted,  a  very 
short  space  of  time  may  suffice  for  these  operations ;  but  to  gain 
such  a  knowledge  of  their  prevalent  opinions  and  propensities,  as 
will  enable  a  stranger  to  comprehend  (what  is  commonly  called) 
the  genius  of  people,  requires  a  long  residence  among  them,  a 
familiar  acquaintance  with  their  language,  and  an  easy  circulation 
among  their  various  societies.  The  society  into  which  a  transient 
stranger  gains  the  most  easy  access  in  any  country,  is  not  often  that 
which  ought  to  stamp  the  national  character  ;  and  no  criterion  can 
be  more  fallible,  in  a  people  so  reserved  and  inaccessible  as  the 
British,  who  (even  when  they  open  their  doors  to  letters  of  intro- 
duction) cannot  for  years  overcome  the  awkward  timidity  of  their 
nature.  The  same  expressions  are  of  so  different  a  value  in  differ- 
ent countries,  the  same  actions  proceed  from  such  diff*erent  causes, 
and  produce  such  different  eff*ects,that  a  judgment  of  foreign  nations, 
founded  on  rapid  observation,  is  almost  certainly  a  mere  tissue  of 
ludicrous  and  disgraceful  mistakes  ;  and  yet  a  residence  of  a  month 
or  two  seems  to  entitle  a  traveller  to  present  the  world  with  a  pic- 
ture of  manners  in  London,  Paris,  or  Vienna,  and  even  to  dogma- 
tize upon  the  political,  religious,  and  legal  institutions,  as  if  it  were 
one  and  the  same  thing  to  speak  of  abstract  effects  of  such  institu- 
tions, and  of  their  effects  combined  with  all  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances in  which  any  nation  may  be  placed. 

2dly.  An  affectation  of  quickness  in  observation,  an  intuitive 
glance  that  requires  only  a  moment,  and  a  part,  to  judge  of  a  per- 
petuity, and  a  whole.  The  late  Mr.  Petion,  who  was  sent  over  m- 
to  this  country  to  acquire  a  knowledge  of  our  criminal  law,  is  said 
to  have  declared  himself  thoroughly  informed  upon  the  subject  af- 
ter remaining  precisely  two-and-thirty  minutes  in  the  Old  Bailey. 

2'l\y.  The  tendency  to  found  observation  on  a  system,  rather 


A    Cx^YLONESE   DUTCHMAN.  Ill 

than  a  system  uiion  observation.  The  fact  is,  there  are  very  few 
original  eyes  and  ears.  The  great  mass  see  and  hear  as  they  are 
directed  by  others,  and  bring  back  from  a  residence  in  foreign 
co'.ntries  nothing  but  the  vague  and  customary  notions  concerning 
it,  which  are  carried  and  brought  back  for  half  a  century,  witliout 
verification  or  change.  The  most  ordinary  shape  in  which  this 
tendency  to  prejudge  makes  its  appearance  among  travellers,  is  by 
a  disposition  to  exalt,  or,  a  still  more  absurd  disposition  to  depre- 
date their  native  country.  They  are  incapable  of  considering  a 
foreign  people  but  under  one  single  point  of  view — the  relation  in 
which  they  stand  to  their  own ;  and  the  whole  narrative  is  fre- 
quently nothing  more  than  a  mere  triumph  of  national  vanity,  or 
the  ostentation  of  superiority  to  so  common  a  failing. 


INHABITANTS    OF    CEYLON.* 

Ceylon  is  now  inhabited  by  the  English ;  the  remains  of  the 
Dutch  and  Portuguese,  the  Cinglese  or  natives,  subject  to  the  do- 
minion of  the  Europeans ;  the  Candians,  subject  to  the  king  of 
their  own  name ;  and  the  Vaddahs,  or  wild  men,  subject  to  no 
power.  A  Ceylonese  Dutchman  is  a  coarse,  grotesque  species  of 
animal,  whose  native  apathy  and  phlegm  is  animated  only  by  the 
insolence  of  a  colonial  tyrant :  his  principal  amusement  appears  to 
consist  in  smoking ;  but  his  pipe,  according  to  Mr.  Percival's  ac- 
count, is  so  seldom  out  of  his  mouth,  that  his  smoking  appears  to 
be  almost  as  much  a  necessary  function  of  animal  life  as  his  breath- 
ing. His  day  is  eked  out  with  gin,  ceremonious  visits,  and  prodi- 
gious quantities  of  gross  food,  dripping  with,  oil  and  butter;  liis  mind, 
just  able  to  reach  from  one  meal  to  another,  is  incapable  of  further 
exertion ;  and,  after  the  panting  and  deglutition  of  a  long-protract- 
ed dinner,  reposes  on  the  sweet  expectation  that,  in  a  few  hours, 
the  carnivorous  toil  will  be  renewed.  He  lives  only  to  digest,  and, 
while  the  organs  of  gluttony  perform  their  office,  he  has  not  a 
wish  beyond ;  and  is  the  happy  man  which  Horace  describes  : — 
in  seipso  totus,  teres,  atque  rotundas. 

The  descendants  of  the  Portuguese  differ  materially  from  the 

*  From  a  review  of  "  An  Account  of  the  Island  of  Ceylon,  by  Robert  Per 
cival."    Ed.  Rev.,  April   1803. 


112  MALAYS. 

Moors,  INIalabars,  and  other  Mahometans.  Their  great  object  is 
to  show  the  world  they  are  Europeans  and  Christians.  Unfortu- 
nately, their  ideas  of  Christianity  are  so  imperfect,  that  the  only 
mode  they  can  hit  upon  of  displaying  their  faith,  is  by  wearing  hats 
and  breeches,  and  by  these  habiliments  they  consider  themselves 
as  sho^^  ing  a  proper  degree  of  contempt,  on  various  parts  of  the 
body,  toward  Mahomet  and  Buddha.  They  are  lazy,  treacherous, 
effeminate,  and  passionate  to  excess  ;  and  are,  in  fact,  a  locomotive 
and  animated  fjirrago  of  the  bad  qualities  of  all  tongues,  people,  and 
nations  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

The  Malays,  whom  we  forgot  before  to  enumerate,  form  a  very 
considerable  portion  of  the  inhabitants  of  Ceylon.  Their  original 
empire  Ues  in  the  peninsula  of  Malacca,  from  whence  they  have  ex- 
tended themselves  over  Java,  Sumatra,  the  Moluccas,  and  a  vast 
number  of  other  islands  in  the  peninsula  of  India.  It  has  been 
many  years  customary  for  the  Dutch  to  bring  them  to  Ceylon,  for 
the  purpose  of  carrying  on  various  branches  of  trade  and  manufac- 
ture, and  in  order  also  to  employ  them  as  soldiers  and  servants 
The  Malays  are  the  most  vindictive  and  ferocious  of  living  beings. 
They  set  little  or  no  value  on  their  own  existence,  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  their  odious  passions  ;  and  having  thus  broken  the  great  tie 
which  renders  man  a  being  capable  of  being  governed,  and  fit  for 
society,  they  are  a  constant  source  of  terror  to  all  those  who  have 
any  kind  of  connection  or  relation  with  them.  A  Malay  servant, 
from  the  apprehension  excited  by  his  vindictive  disposition,  often 
becomes  the  master  of  his  master.  It  is  as  dangerous  to  dismiss 
him  as  to  punish  him ;  and  the  rightful  despot,  in  order  to  avoid 
assassination,  is  almost  compelled  to  exchange  characters  with  his 
slave.  It  is  singular,  however,  that  the  Malay,  incapable  of  sub- 
mission on  any  other  occasion,  and  ever  ready  to  avenge  insult 
with  death,  submits  to  the  severest  militaiy  discipline  with  the  ut- 
most resignation  and  meekness.  The  truth  is,  obedience  to  his 
officers  forms  part  of  his  religious  creed ;  and  the  same  man  who 
would  repay  the  most  insignificant  insult  with  death,  will  submit 
to  be  lacerated  at  the  halbert  with  the  patience  of  a  martyr.  This 
is  truly  a  tremendous  people  !  When  assassins  and  blood-hounds 
will  fall  into  rank  and  file,  and  the  most  furious  savages  submit 
(with  no  diminution  of  their  ferocity)  to  the  science  and  discipline 
of  war,  they  only  want  a  Malay  Buonaparte  to  lead  them  to  the 


MADAME    DE    STAEL.  113 

conquest  of  the  world.  Our  curiositj  has  always  been  very  highly 
excited  by  the  accounts  of  this  singular  people ;  and  wc  cannot 
help  thinking  that,  one  day  or  another,  when  they  are  more  full 
of  opium  than  usual,  they  will  run  a  muck  from  Cape  Comoriu  to 
the  Caspian. 


MADAME   DE    STAEL's    DELPHINE.* 

This  dismal  trash,  which  has  nearly  dislocated  the  jaws  of  every 
critic  among  us  with  gaping,  has  so  alaiined  Buonaparte,  that  he 
has  seized  the  whole  impression,  sent  Madame  de  Stael  out  of 
Paris,  and,  for  aught  we  know,  sleeps  in  a  night-cap  of  steel  and 
dagger-proof  blankets.  To  us  it  appears  rather  an  attack  upon 
the  Ten  Commandments  than  the  government  of  Buonaparte,  and 
calculated  not  so  much  to  enforce  the  rights  of  the  Bourbons,  as  the 
benefits  of  adultery,  murder,  and  a  great  number  of  other  vices, 
which  have  been,  some  how  or  other,  strangely  neglected  in  this 
country,  and  too  much  so  (according  to  the  apparent  opinion  of 
IMadame  de  Stael)  even  in  France. 

It  happens,  however,  fortunately  enough,  that  her  book  is  as 
dull  as  it  could  have  been  if  her  intentions  had  been  good ;  for  wit, 
dexterity,  and  the  pleasant  energies  of  the  mind,  seldom  rank 
themselves  on  the  side  of  virtue  and  social  order ;  wliile  vice  is 
spiritual,  eloquent,  and  alert,  ever  choice  in  expression,  happy  in 
allusion,  and  judicious  in  arrangement. 

The  story  is  simply  this : — Delphine,  a  rich  young  widow,  pre- 
sents her  cousin,  Matilda  de  Vernon,  with  a  considerable  estate,  in 
order  to  enable  her  to  mai-ry  Leonce  Mondeville.  To  this  action 
she  is  excited  by  the  arts  and  the  intrigues  of  Madame  de  Vernon, 
a  hackneyed  Parisian  lady,  who  hopes,  by  this  marriage,  to  be 
able  to  discharge  her  numerous  and  pressing  debts.  Leonce,  who, 
like  all  other  heroes  of  novels,  has  fine  limbs  and  fine  qualities, 
comes  to  Paris — dislikes  Matilda — falls  in  love  with  Delphine, 
Delphine  with  him ;  and  they  are  upon  the  eve  of  jilting  poor  Ma- 
tilda, when,  from  some  false  reports  spread  abroad  respecting  the 
character  of  Delphine  (which  are  aggravated  by  her  own  impru- 
dences, and  by  the  artifices  of  Madame  de  Vernon),  Leonce,  not  iu 

*  Delphine.  By  Madame  de  Stael  Holstein.  London,  Mawman.  6  voIb. 
121113.     Ed.  Rev.,  April,  1803. 


Ill  DELPHINE. 

a  fit  of  honesty,  b  Jt  of  revenge,  marries  the  lady  whom  he  came  to 
marry.  Soon  after,  Madame  de  Vernon  dies  —  discovers  the  arti- 
fices by  which  she  had  prevented  the  union  of  Leonce  and  Del- 
phine — and  then,  after  this  catastrophe,  which  ought  to  have 
terminated  the  novel,  come  two  long  volumes  of  complaint  and 
despair.  Delphine  becomes  a  nun — runs  away  from  the  nunnery 
with  Leonce,  who  is  taken  by  some  French  soldiers,  upon  the 
supposition  that  he  has  been  serving  in  the  French  emigrant  army 
against  liis  country — is  shot,  and  upon  his  dead  body  falls  Del- 
phine, as  dead  as  he. 

Making  every  allowance  for  reading  this  book  in  a  translation, 
and  in  a  very  bad  ti'anslation,  we  cannot  but  deem  it  a  heavy  per- 
formance. The  incidents  are  vulgar ;  the  characters  vulgar,  too, 
except  those  of  Delphine  and  Madame  de  Vernon.  ]\Iadame  de 
Stael  has  not  the  artifice  to  hide  what  is  coming.  In  travelling 
tlirough  a  flat  country,  or  a  flat  book,  we  see  our  road  before  us 
for  half  the  distance  we  are  going.  There,  are  no  agreeable  sinu- 
osities, and  no  speculations  whether  we  are  to  ascend  next,  or 
descend ;  what  new  sight  we  are  to  enjoy,  or  to  which  side  we  are 
to  bend.  Leonce  is  robbed  and  half-murdered ;  the  apothecary 
of  the  place  is  certain  he  will  not  live ;  we  were  absolutely  certain 
that  he  would  live,  and  could  predict  to  an  hour  the  time  of  his 
recoveiy.  In  the  same  manner  we  could  have  prophesied  every 
event  of  the  book  a  whole  volume  before  its  occurrence. 

This  novel  is  a  perfect  Alexandrian.  The  last  two  volumes 
are  redundant,  and  drag  their  wounded  length :  it  should  certainly 
have  terminated  where  the  interest  ceases,  at  the  death  of  Madame 
de  Vernon ;  but,  instead  of  this,  the  scene-shifters  come  and  pick 
up  the  dead  bodies,  wash  the  stage,  sweep  it,  and  do  everything 
wliich  the  timely  fall  of  the  curtain  should  have  excluded  from  the 
sight,  and  left  to  the  imagination  of  the  audience.  We  humbly 
apprehend,  that  young  gentlemen  do  not,  in  general,  make  their 
tutors  the  confidants  of  their  passion ;  at  least  we  can  find  no  rule 
of  that  kind  laid  down  either  by  Miss  Hamilton  or  Miss  Edge- 
worth,  in  their  treatises  on  education.  The  tutor  of  Leonce  is  Mr. 
Barton,  a  grave  old  gentleman,  in  a  peruke  and  snuff'-coloured 
clothes.  Listead  of  writing  to  this  solemn  personage  about  second 
causes,  the  ten  categories,  and  the  eternal  fitness  of  things,  the 
young  lover  raves  to  him,  for  whole  pages,  about  the  white  neck 


TALLEYRAND.  115 

and  auburn  hair  of  1  is  Delphine  ;  and,  shame  to  tell !  the  liquorish 
old  pedagogue  seems  to  think  these  amorous  ebullitions  the  pleas- 
antest  sort  of  writing  in  vsum  Dclpliini  that  he  has  yet  met  with. 
By  altering  one  word,  and  making  on^y  one  false  quantity,*  we 
shall  change  the  rule  of  Plorace  to 

"  Nac  febris  intersit  nisi  dignus  vindico  ridus 
Incident." 

Delphine  and  Leonce  have  eight  very  bad  typhus  fevers  between 
them,  besides  hcE)noptoe,  hemorrhage,  deliquium  animi,  singultus, 
hysteria,  and  fceminei  tdulatus,  or  screams  innumerable.  Now, 
that  there  should  be  a  reasonable  allowance  of  sickness  in  every 
novel,  we  are  willing  to  admit,  and  will  cheerfully  permit  the  hero- 
ine to  be  once  given  over,  and  at  the  point  of  death  ;  but  we  cannot 
consent  that  the  interest  which  ought  to  be  excited  by  the  feelings 
of  the  mind  should  be  transferred  to  the  sufferings  of  the  body,  and 
a  crisis  of  perspiration  be  substituted  for  a  crisis  of  passion.  Let 
us  see  difficulties  overcome,  if  our  approbation  is  required ;  we 
cannot  grant  it  to  such  cheap  and  sterile  artifices  as  these. 

The  characters  in  this  novel  are  all  said  to  be  drawn  from  real 
life ;  and  the  persons  for  whom  they  are  intended  are  loudly  whis- 
pered at  Paris.  Most  of  them  we  have  forgotten ;  but  Delphine 
is  said  to  be  intended  for  the  authoress,  and  Madame  de  Vernon 
(by  a  slight  sexual  metamorphosis)  for  Talleyrand,  minister  of  the 
French  republic  for  foreign  affairs.f  As  this  lady  (once  the  friend 
of  the  authoress)  may  probably  exercise  a  considerable  influence 
over  the  destinies  of  this  country,  we  shall  endeavour  to  make  our 
readers  a  little  better  acquainted  with  her ;  but  we  must  first  r*?- 
mind  them  that  she  was  once  a  bishop,  a  higher  dignity  in  the 
church  than  was  ever  attained  by  any  of  her  sex  since  the  days 
of  Pope  Joan  ;  and  that  though  she  swindles  Delphine  out  of  her 
estate  with  a  considerable  degree  of  address,  her  dexterity  some- 

*  Perhaps  a  fault  of  all  others  which  the  English  are  least  disposed  to  par- 
Ion.  A  young  man  who,  on  a  public  occasion,  makes  a  false  quantity  at  the 
jutset  of  life,  can  seldom  or  never  get  over  it. — Author's  Note. 

t  Madamade  Staol,  on  meeting  Talleyrand  at  an  evening  party  after  the 
.)ublication  of  this  book,  was  addressed  by  the  ci-dcvant  Bishop  with  "Eh, 
Madame,  on  dit  que  nous  sommes  tons  les  deux  dans  votre  livre  deguises  ea 
ffnunes." 


116  IMMORALITY    OF   A   BOOK. 

times  fails  her,  as  in  the  memorable  instance  of  the  American  com- 
missioners. Madame  de  Stael  gives  the  following  description  of 
this  pastoral  metropolitan  female  : 

"  Though  she  is  at  least  forty,  she  still  appears  charming  even  among  the 
young  and  beautiful  of  her  own  sex.  The  paleness  of  her  complexion,  the 
slight  relaxation  of  her  features,  indicate  the  languor  of  indisposition,  and  not 
the  decay  of  years  ;  the  easy  negligence  of  her  dress  accords  with  this  impres- 
sion. Every  one  concludes,  that  when  her  health  is  recovered,  and  she  dresses 
with  more  care,  she  must  be  completely  beautiful :  this  change,  however, 
never  happens,  but  it  is  always  expected ;  and  that  is  sufficient  to  make  the 
imagination  still  add  something  more  to  the  natural  effect  of  her  charms." — 
(Vol.  i.,  p.  21.) 

Nothing  can  be  more  execrable  than  the  manner  in  which  this 
book  is  translated.  The  bookseller  has  employed  one  of  our 
countrymen  for  that  purpose,  who  appears  to  have  been  very  lately 
caught.  The  contrast  between  the  passionate  exclamations  of 
IMadame  de  Stael,  and  the  barbarous  vulgarities  of  poor  Sawney, 
produces  a  mighty  ludicrous  effect.  One  of  the  heroes,  a  man  of 
high  fastidious  temper,  exclaims  in  a  letter  to  Delphine,  "  I  cannot 
endure  this  Paris  ;  I  have  met  with  ever  so  many  people,  whom 
my  soul  abhors."  And  the  accomplished  and  enraptured  Leonce 
terminates  one  of  his  letters  thus ;  "  Adieu  !  Adieu,  my  dearest 
Delphine !  I  will  give  you  a  call  to-morrow."  We  doubt  if 
Grub  street  ever  imported  from  Caledonia  a  more  abominable 
translator. 

We  admit  the  character  of  Madame  de  Yemon  to  be  drawn 
with  considerable  skill.  There  are  occasional  traits  of  eloquence 
and  pathos  in  this  novel,  and  very  many  of  those  observations  upon 
manners  and  character,  which  are  totally  out  of  the  reach  of  all 
who  have  not  lived  long  in  the  world,  and  observed  it  well. 

The  immorality  of  any  book  (in  our  estimation)  is  to  be  deter- 
mined by  the  general  impression  it  leaves  on  those  minds,  whose 
principles,  not  yet  ossified,  are  capable  of  affording  a  less  powerful 
defence  to  its  influence.  The  most  dangerous  effect  that  any  fic- 
titious character  can  produce,  is  when  two  or  three  of  its  popular 
vices  are  varnished  over  with  everything  that  is  captivating  and 
gracious  in  the  exterior,  and  ennobled  by  association  with  s^^lendid 
virtues ;  this  apology  wiU  be  more  sure  of  its  effect,  if  the  faults 
are  not  against  nature,  but  against  society.  The  aversion  to  mur- 
der and  cruelty  could  not  perhaps  be  so  overcome ;  but  a  regard 


I 


CHARACTERS.  117 

to  the  sanctity  of  marriage  vows,  to  the  sacred  and  sensitive  deli- 
cacy of  tlie  female  character,  and  to  numberless  restrictions  impor- 
tant to  the  well-being  of  our  species,  may  easily  be  relaxed  by  this 
sulxle  and  voluptuous  confusion  of  good  and  evil.  It  is  in  vain  to 
say  the  fable  evinces,  in  the  last  act,  that  vice  is  productive  of  mis- 
ery. We  may  decorate  a  villain  M'ith  graces  and  felicities  for  nine 
volumes  and  hang  him  in  the  last  page.  This  is  not  teaching  vir- 
tue, but  gilding  the  gallows,  and  raising  up  splendid  associations 
in  «ivour  of  being  hanged.  In  such  a  union  of  the  amiable  and 
the  vicious  (especially  if  the  vices  are  such,  to  the  commission  of 
which  there  is  no  want  of  natural  disposition),  the  vice  will  not  de- 
grade the  man,  but  the  man  will  ennoble  the  vice.  We  shall  Avish 
to  be  him  we  admire,  iti  spite  of  his  vices,  and,  if  the  novel  be  well 
written,  even  in  consequence  of  his  vice.  There  exists,  through  the 
wliole  of  this  novel,  a  show  of  exquisite  sensibility  to  the  evils 
which  individuals  suffer  by  the  inflexible  rules  of  virtue  prescribed 
by  society,  and  an  eager  disposition  to  apologize  for  particular 
transgressions.  Such  doctrine  is  not  confined  to  Madame  de  Stael ; 
an  Arcadian  cant  is  gaining  fast  upon  Spartan  gravity ;  and  the 
happiness  diffused,  and  the  beautiful  order  established  in  society,  by 
this  unbending  disciphne,  are  wholly  swallowed  up  in  compassion 
for  the  unfortunate  and  interesting  individual.  Either  the  excep- 
tions or  the  rule  must  be  given  up  :  every  highwayman  who  thrusts 
his  pistol  into  a  chaise-window  has  met  with  unforeseen  misfor- 
tunes;  and  every  loose  matron  who  flies  into  the  arms  of  her 
Greville  was  compelled  to  marry  an  old  man  whom  she  detested, 
by  an  avaricious  and  unfeeling  father.  The  passions  want  not  ac- 
celerating, but  retai-ding  machinery.  This  fatal  and  foolish  sophis- 
try has  power  enough  over  every  heart,  not  to  need  the  aid  of 
line  composition,  and  well-contrived  incident — auxiliaries  which 
Madame  de  Stael  intended  to  bring  forward  in  the  cause,  though 
she  has  fortunately  not  succeeded. 

M.  de  Serbellone  is  received  as  a  guest  into  the  house  of  M. 
d'Ervins,  Avhose  Avife  he  debauches  as  a  recompense  for  his  hospi- 
tality. Is  it  possible  to  be  disgusted  with  ingratitude  and  injustice, 
when  united  to  such  an  assemblage  of  talents  and  virtues  as  this 
man  of  paper  possesses  ?  Was  there  ever  a  more  dehghtful,  fas- 
cinating adultress  than  Madame  d'Ervins  is  intended  to  be  ?  or  a 
povero  cornuto  less  capable  of  exciting  compassion  than  her  bus- 


118  THE   LESSON   OF   DELPHINE. 

Land  ?  The  morality  of  all  this  is  the  old  morality  of  Farquhar, 
Vanburgh,  and  Congreve  —  that  every  witty  man  may  transgress 
the  seventh  commandment,  which  was  never  meant  for  the  protec- 
tion of  husbands  who  labour  under  the  incapacity  of  making  repar- 
tees. In  Matilda,  rehgion  is  always  as  unamiable  as  dissimulation 
is  graceful  in  Madame  de  Vernon,  and  imprudence  generous  in 
Delphine.  This  said  Delphine,  with  her  fine  auburn  hair,  and  her 
beautiful  blue  or  green  eyes  (we  forget  which),  cheats  her  cousin 
Matilda  out  of  her  lover,  alienates  the  affections  of  her  husband, 
and  keeps  a  sort  of  assignation  house  for  Serbellone  and  his  chore 
amie,  justifj-'ing  herself  by  the  most  touching  complaints  against 
the  rigour  of  the  world,  and  using  the  customary  phrases,  union 
of  souls,  married  in  the  eye  of  heaven,  &c.,  &c.,  &;c.,  and  such 
like  diction,  the  types  of  which  Mr.  Lane,  of  the  Minerva  Press, 
very  prudently  keeps  ready  composed,  in  order  to  facilitate  the 

jjrinting  of  the  Adventures  of  Captain  C and  Miss  F , 

and  other  interesting  stories,  of  which  he,  the  said  inimitable  Mr. 
Lane,  of  the  Minerva  Press,  well  knows  these  sentiments  must 
make  a  part.  Another  perilous  absurdity  which  this  useful  pro- 
duction tends  to  cherish,  is  the  common  notion,  that  contempt  of 
rule  and  order  is  a  proof  of  greatness  of  mind.  Delphine  is 
everywhere  a  great  spirit  struggling  with  the  shackles  imposed 
upon  her,  in  common  with  the  little  world  around  her ;  and  it  is 
managed  so  that  her  contempt  of  restrictions  shall  always  appear 
to  flow  from  the  extent,  variety,  and  splendour  of  her  talents. 
The  \T.ilgarity  of  this  heroism  ought,  in  some  degree,  to  diminish 
its  value.  Mr.  Colquhoun,  in  his  Police  of  the  Metropolis,  reck- 
ons up  above  forty  thousand  heroines  of  this  species,  most  of  whom, 
we  dare  to  say,  have,  at  one  time  or  another,  reasoned  like  the  sen- 
timental Delphine  about  the  judgments  of  the  world. 

To  conclude  —  Our  general  opinion  of  this  book  is,  that  it  is 
calculated  to  shed  a  mild  lustre  over  adultery ;  by  gentle  and  con- 
venient gradation,  to  destroy  the  modesty  and  the  caution  of 
women ;  to  facilitate  the  acquisition  of  easy  vices,  and  eneumbei 
the  difficulty  of  virtue.  What  a  wretched  qualification  of  this 
censure  to  add,  that  the  badness  of  the  principles  is  alone  corrected 
by  the  badness  of  the  style,  and  that  tliis  celebrated  lady  would 
have  been  very  guilty,  if  she  had  not  been  very  r"  ill ! 


I 


SMALL-TOOTH   COMBS.  119 

USE    OF    RIDICULE.* 

We  are  a  good  deal  amused,  indeed,  with,  the  extreme  disrelish 
which  Mr.  John  Stylesf  exhibits  to  the  humour  and  pleasantry 
with  which  he  admits  the  Methodists  to  have  been  attacked ;  but 
Mr.  John  Styles  should  remember,  that  it  is  not  the  practice  with 
destroyers  of  vermin  to  allow  the  little  victims  a  veto  upon  the 
weapons  used  against  them.  If  this  were  otherwise,  we  should 
have  one  set  of  vermin  banishing  small-tooth  combs ;  another 
protesting  against  mouse-traps  :  a  third  prohibiting  the  finger  and 
thumb  ;  a  fourth  exclaiming  against  the  intolerable  infamy  of  using 
soap  and  water.  It  is  impossible,  however,  to  listen  to  such  pleas. 
They  must  all  be  caught,  killed,  and  cracked,  in  the  manner,  and 
by  the  instruments  ^^hich  are  found  most  efficacious  to  their  de- 
struction ;  and  the  more  they  cry  out,  the  greater,  plainly,  is  the 
skill  used  against  them.  We  are  convinced  a  little  laughter  will 
do  them  more  harm  than  all  the  arguments  in  the  world.  Such 
men  as  the  author  before  us,  cannot  understand  when  they  are  out- 
argued  ;  but  he  has  given  us  a  specimen,  from  his  irritability,  that 
he  fully  comprehends  when  he  has  become  the  object  of  universal 
contempt  and  derision.  We  agree  with  him,  that  ridicule  is  not 
exactly  the  weapon  to  be  used  in  matters  of  religion ;  but  the  use 
of  it  is  excusable,  when  there  is  no  other  which  can  make  fools 


*  From  an  article  on  "Methodism."     Ed.  Rev.,  1809. 

t  Strictures  on  two  Critiques  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  on  the  Subject  of 
Methodism  and  Missions ;  with  Remarks  on  tlie  Influence  of  Reviews,  in 
general,  on  Morals  and  Happiness.     By  John  Styles.     8vo.     London,  1809. 

t  Smith  repeats  the  "small-tooth  comb"  illustration  in  his  handling  of  Dr. 
Monk,  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  in  the  Third  Letter  to  Archdeacon  Single- 
ton, Mr.  Styles  was  again  the  subject  of  a  literary  agitation  in  1839,  when, 
having  become  the  Rev.  John  Styles,  D.D.,  he  published,  under  the  aus- 
pices of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals,  a  pnze  Es- 
say entitled,  "  The  Animal  Creation,  its  Claims  on  our  Humanity  Stated 
and  Enforced."  The  tract  was  replied  to  in  "A  Pamphlet,  dedicated  tc 
the  Noblemen,  Gentlemen,  and  Sportsmen  of  England,  Ireland,  and  Scot- 
land," by  the  Hon.  Grantley  Fitzhardinge  Berkeley,  M.  P.  The  subject  is 
roughly  reviewed  in  an  article,  "  Sydney  Smith,  John  Styles,  and  Grantley 
Berkeley,"  in  Eraser's  Magazine,  August,  1839.  The  Rev.  Dr.  Styles  was 
a  dissenting  clergyman  of  note,  the  author  of  various  published  discourses 
of  an  occasional  cliaracter.  He  also  published  a  Life  of  David  Brainerd,  and 
a  Family  Bible,  with  illustrative  notes,  in  two  volumes  quarto. 


120  AUTHORS   AND   THE   ARK, 

ANTEDILUVIAN    AUTHORSHIP.* 

There  are  occasionally,  in  Philopatris,  a  great  vigour  of  style 
and  felicity  of  expression.  His  display  of  classical  learning  is 
quite  unrivalled  —  his  reading  A^arious  and  good;  and  we  may 
observe,  at  intervals,  a  talent  for  wit,  of  which  he  might  have 
availed  himself  to  excellent  purpose,  had  it  been  compatible  with 
the  dignified  style  in  which  he  generally  conveys  his  sentiments. 
With  all  these  excellent  qualities  of  head  and  heart,  we  have  sel- 
dom met  with  a  writer  more  full  of  faults  than  Philopatris.  There 
is  an  event  recorded  in  the  Bible,  which  men  who  write  books 
should  keep  constantly  in  their  remembrance.  It  is  there  set 
forth,  that  many  centuries  ago,  the  earth  Avas  covered  with  a  great 
flood,  by  which  the  whole  of  the  human  race,  with  the  exception 
of  one  family,  were  destroyed.  It  appears  also,  that  from  thence,  a 
great  alteration  was  made  in  the  longevity  of  mankind,  who,  from  a 
range  of  seven  or  eight  hundred  years,  which  they  enjoyed  before 
the  flood,  were  confined  to  their  present  period  of  seventy  or  eighty 
years.  This  epoch  in  the  history  of  man  gave  birth  to  the  twofold 
division  of  the  antediluvian  and  postdiluvian  style  of  writing,  the 
latter  of  which  naturally  conti'acted  itself  into  those  inferior  limits 
which  were  better  accommodated  to  the  abridged  duration  of  human 
life  and  literary  labour.  Now,  to  forget  this  event — to  write  with- 
out the  fear  of  the  deluge  before  his  eyes,  and  to  handle  a  subject 
as  if  mankind  could  lounge  over  a  pamphlet  for  ten  years,  as  before 
their  submersion — is  to  be  guilty  of  the  most  grievous  error  into 
which  a  writer  can  possibly  fall.f  The  author  of  this  book  should 
call  in  the  aid  of  some  brilliant  pencil,  and  cause  the  distressing 
scenes  of  the  deluge  to  be  portrayed  in  the  most  lively  colours  for 
his  use.  He  should  gaze  at  Noah  and  be  brief.  The  ark  should 
constantly  remind  him  of  the  little  time  there  is  left  for  reading ; 
and  he  should  learn,  as  they  did  in  the  ark,  to  crowd  a  great  deal 
of  matter  into  a  very  little  compass. 

*  Fi-om  a  review  of  Characters  of  the  late  Charles  James  Fox,  by  Philo- 
patris Van'icensis  (Dr.  Parr).  Ed.  Rev.,  1809. 

t  Macaulay  has  borrowed  this  illustration.  In  a  review  (Ed.  Rev.,  1832) 
of  Nares'  Memoirs  of  Lord  Burghley,  he  has  :  "  Such  a  book  might,  before  the 
deluge,  have  been  considered  as  light  reading  by  Hilpa  and  Shalum.  But, 
unhappily,  the  life  of  man  is  now  three  score  years  and  ten  :  and  we  cannot 
but  think  it  somewhat  unfair  in  Dr.  Nares  to  demand  from  us  so  large  a  por 
tion  of  so  short  an  existence." 


THE   ANCIENT   LANGUAGES.  121 

ENGLISH    CLASSICAL    EDUCATION.* 

There  are  two  questions  wliich  grow  out  of  this  subject:  Ist, 
How  far  is  any  sort  of  classical  education  useful  ?  2d,  How  far 
is  that  particulai'  classical  education  adopted  in  this  country  useful  ? 

Latin  and  Greek  are,  in  the  first  place,  useful,  as  they  inure 
children  to  intellectual  diflieulties,  and  make  the  life  of  a  young 
p.tudent  what  it  ought  to  be,  a  life  of  considerable  labour.  "We  do 
not,  of  course,  mean  to  confine  this  praise  exclusively  to  the  study 
of  Latin  and  Greek ;  or  to  suppose  that  other  difficulties  might 
not  be  found  which  it  would  be  useful  to  overcome :  but  though 
Latin  and  Greek  have  this  merit  in  common  with  many  arts  and 
sciences,  still  they  have  it ;  and,  if  they  do  nothing  else,  they  at 
least  secure  a  solid  and  vigorous  appHcation  at  a  period  of  life 
which  materially  influences  all  other  periods. 

To  go  through  the  grammar  of  one  language  thoroughly  is  of 
great  use  for  the  mastery  of  every  other  grammar ;  because  there 
obtains,  through  all  languages,  a  certain  analogy  to  each  other  in 
their  grammatical  construction.  Latin  and  Greek  have  now 
mixed  themselves  etymologically  with  all  the  languages  of  modern 
Europe  —  and  with  none  more  than  our  own;  so  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  read  these  two  tongues  for  other  objects  than  themselves. 

The  two  ancient  languages  are,  as  mei*e  inventions — as  pieces  of 
mechanism  —  incomparably  more  beautiful  than  any  of  the  modern 
languages  of  Europe :  their  mode  of  signifying  time  and  case  by 
terminations,  instead  of  auxiliary  verbs  and  particles,  would  of 
itself  stamp  their  superiority.  Add  to  this,  the  copiousness  of  the 
Greek  language,  with  the  fancy,  majesty,  and  harmony  of  its  com- 
pounds ;  and  there  are  quite  sufficient  reasons  why  the  classics 
should  be  studied  for  the  beauties  of  language.  Compared  to 
them,  merely  as  vehicles  of  thought  and  passion,  all  modern  lan- 
guages are  dull,  ill-contrived,  and  barbarous. 

That  a  great  part  of  the  Scriptures  has  come  down  to  us  in  the 
Greek  language,  is  of  itself  a  reason,  if  all  others  were  wanting, 
Avhy  education  should  be  planned  so  as  to  produce  a  supply  of 
Greek  scholars. 

The  Cultivation  of  style  is  very  justly  made  a  part  of  .''.ducatinn. 

*  From  an  article  "Professional  Education."  Ed.  Rev.,  Ocv.,  1809. 

6 


122  TOO   MUCH  LATIN   AND   GREEK. 

Everj'thing  whicli  is  written  is  meant  either  to  please  or  to  instruct. 
The  second  object  it  is  difficult  to  eiFect,  without  attending  to  the 
first ;  and  the  cultivation  of  style  is  the  acquisition  of  those  rules 
and  Hterary  habits  which  sagacity  anticipates,  or  experience  shows, 
to  be  the  most  effectual  means  of  pleasing.  Those  Avorks  are  the 
best  Avhich  have  longest  stood  the  test  of  time,  and  pleased  the 
greatest  number  of  exercised  minds.  Whatever,  therefore,  our 
conjectures  may  be,  we  cannot  be  so  sure  that  the  best  modern 
writers  can  afford  us  as  good  models  as  the  ancients ; — we  cannot 
be  certain  that  they  will  live  through  the  revolutions  of  the  world, 
and  continue  to  please  in  every  climate  —  under  every  species  of 
government — through  every  stage  of  civilization.  The  moderns 
have  been  well  taught  by  their  masters  ;  but  the  time  is  hardly  yet 
come  when  the  necessity  for  such  instruction  no  longer  exists. 
We  may  still  borrow  descriptive  power  from  Tacitus;  dignified 
perspicuity  from  Livy ;  simplicity  from  C«sar ;  and  from  Homer 
some  portion  of  that  light  and  heat  which,  dispersed  into  ten  thou- 
sand channels,  has  filled  the  world  with  bright  images  and  illustri- 
ous thoughts.  Let  the  cultivator  of  modern  literature  addict  him- 
self to  the  purest  models  of  taste  which  France,  Italy,  and  Eng- 
land could  supply,  he  might  still  learn  from  Virgil  to  be  majestic, 
and  from  TibuUus  to  be  tender ;  he  might  not  yet  look  upon  the 
face  of  nature  as  Theocritus  saw  it ;  nor  might  he  reach  those 
springs  of  pathos  with  which  Euripides  softened  the  hearts  of  his 
audience.  In  short,  it  appears  to  us,  that  there  are  so  many  excel- 
lent reasons  why  a  certain  number  of  scholars  should  be  kept  up 
in  this  and  in  every  civilized  country,  that  we  should  consider 
every  system  of  education  from  which  classical  education  was  ex- 
cluded, as  radically  erroneous  and  completely  absurd. 

That  vast  advantages,  then,  may  be  derived  from  classical  learn- 
ing, there  can  be  no  doubt.  The  advantages  which  are  derived 
from  classical  learning  by  the  English  manner  of  teaching,  involve 
another  and  a  very  different  question ;  and  we  will  venture  to  say, 
that  there  never  was  a  more  complete  instance  in  any  country  of 
such  extravagant  and  overacted  attachment  to  any  branch  of 
knowledge  as  that  which  obtains  in  this  country  with  regard  to 
classical  knowledge.  A  young  Englishman  goes  to  school  at  six 
or  seven  years  old ;  and  he  remains  in  a  course  of  education  till 
twenty-three  or  twenty-four  years  of  age.     In  all  that  time,  his 


LATIN  VERSES.  123 

pole  and  exclusive  occupation  is  learning  Latin  and  Greek  :*  lie 
has  scarcely  a  notion  that  thei-e  is  any  other  kind  of  excellence ; 
and  the  great  system  of  facts  with  which  he  is  the  most  perfectly 
acquainted,  are  the  intrigues  of  the  heathen  gods :  with  whom  Pan 
slept? — with  whom  Jupiter? — whom  Apollo  ravished?  These 
facts  the  English  youth  get  by  heart  the  moment  they  quit  the 
nursery ;  and  are  most  sedulously  and  mdustriously  instructed  in 
them  till  the  best  and  most  active  part  of  life  is  passed  away. 
Now,  this  long  career  of  classical  learning,  we  may,  if  we  please, 
denominate  a  foundation  ;  but  it  is  a  foundation  so  far  above  ground, 
that  there  is  absolutely  no  room  to  put  anything  upon  it.  If  you 
occupy  a  man  with  one  thing  till  he  is  twenty-four  years  of  age, 
you  have  exhausted  all  his  leisure  time  :  he  is  called  into  the  world, 
and  compelled  to  act ;  or  is  surrounded  with  pleasures,  and  tliinlvs 
and  reads  no  more.  If  you  have  neglected  to  put  other  things  in 
him,  they  Avill  never  get  in  afterward  ; — if  you  have  fed  him  only 
with  words,  he  Avill  remain  a  narrow  and  limited  being  to  the  end 
of  his  existence. 

The  bias  given  to  men's  minds  is  so  strong,  that  it  is  no  uncom- 
mon thing  to  meet  Avith  Englishmen,  whom,  but  for  their  gray 
hairs  and  wrinkles,  we  might  easily  mistake  for  schoolboys.  Their 
talk  is  of  Latin  verses ;  and  it  is  quite  clear,  if  men's  ages  are  to 
be  dated  from  the  state  of  their  mental  progress,  that  such  men  are 
eighteen  years  of  age,  and  not  a  day  older.  Their  minds  have 
been  so  completely  possessed  by  exaggerated  notions  of  classical 
learning,  that  they  have  not  been  able,  in  the  great  school  of  the 
world,  to  form  any  other  notion  of  real  greatness.  Attend,  too,  to 
the  public  feelings  —  look  to  all  the  terms  of  applause.  A  learned 
man! — a  scholar!  —  a  man  of  erudition!  Upon  whom  are  these 
epithets  of  approbation  bestowed  ?  Are  they  given  to  men  ac- 
quainted with  the  science  of  government  ?  thoroughly  masters  of 
the  geographical  and  commercial  relations  of  Europe  ?  to  men  who 
know  the  properties  of  bodies,  and  their  action  upon  each  other? 
No:  this  is  not  learning:  it  is  chemistry  or  political  ecconomy — 
not  learning.  The  distinguishing  abstract  term,  the  epithet  of 
scholar,  is  reserved  for  him  who  writes  on  the  OEolic  reduplication, 

*  Unless  he  goes  to  the  University  of  Cambridge ;  and  then  classics  occupy 
him  entirely  for  about  ten  years ;  and  divide  him  with  mathematics  for  four  oi 
five  more. 


124  MEANS   AND   ENDS. 

and  is  familiar  with  the  Sylburgian  method  of  arranging  defectives 
in  w  and  fxu  The  picture  which  a  young  EngUshman,  addicted  to 
the  pursuit  of  Ivnowledge,  draws  —  his  beau  ideal  of  human  nature 
—  his  top  and  consummation  of  man's  powers — is  a  knowledge  of 
the  Greek  language.  His  object  is  not  to  reason,  to  imagine,  or 
to  invent ;  but  to  conjugate,  dechne,  and  derive.  The  situations 
of  imaginary  gloiy  which  he  draws  for  himself,  are  the  detection 
of  an  anapaest  in  the  wrong  place,  or  the  restoration  of  a  dative 
case  which  Cranzius  had  passed  over,  and  the  never-dying  Ernesti 
foiled  to  observe.  If  a  young  classic  of  this  kind  were  to  meet  the 
greatest  chemist  or  the  greatest  mechanician,  or  the  most  profound 
political  economist  of  his  time,  in  company  with  the  greatest  Greek 
scholar,  would  the  slightest  comparison  between  them  ever  come 
across  his  mind? — would  he  ever  dream  that  such  men  as  Adam 
Smith  or  Lavoisier  were  equal  in  dignity  of  understanding  to,  or 
of  the  same  utility  as,  Bentley  and  Heyne  ?  We  are  inclined  to 
think,  that  the  feeling  excited  would  be  a  good  deal  hke  that  which 
was  expressed  by  Dr.  George  about  the  praises  of  the  great  King 
of  Prussia,  who  entertained  considerable  doubt  whether  the  King, 
with  all  his  victories,  knew  how  to  conjugate  a  Greek  verb  in  jUf. 

Another  misfortune  of  classical  learning,  as  taught  in  England, 
is,  that  scholars  have  come,  in  process  of  time,  and  from  the  effects 
of  association,  to  love  the  instrument  better  than  the  end  ; — not  the 
luxury  which  the  difficulty  encloses,  but  the  difficulty ; — ^not  the 
filbert,  but  the  shell ; — not  what  may  be  read  in  Greek,  but  Greek 
itself.  It  is  not  so  much  the  man  who  has  mastered  the  wisdom 
of  the  ancients,  that  is  valued,  as  he  who  displays  his  knowledge 
of  the  vehicle  in  which  that  wisdom  is  conveyed.  The  glory  is  to 
show  I  am  a  scholar.  The  good  sense  and  ingenuity  I  may  gain 
by  my  acquaintance  with  ancient  authors  is  matter  of  opinion ;  but 
if  I  bestow  an  immensity  of  pains  upon  a  point  of  accent  or  quan- 
tity, this  is  something  positive ;  I  establish  my  pretensions  to  the 
name  of  a  scholar,  and  gain  the  credit  of  learning,  while  I  sacrifice 
all  its  utility. 

Another  evil  in  the  present  system  of  classical  education  is  the 
extraordinary  perfection  which  is  aimed  at  in  teaching  those  lan- 
guages ;  a  needless  perfection ;  an  accuracy  which  is  sought  for 
in  nothing  else.  There  are  few  boys  who  remain  to  the  age  of 
eighteen  or  nineteen  at  a  pubUc  school,  without  making  above  ten 


EXCESS   OP  THE  PURSUIT.  125 

thousand  Latin  verses ; — a  greater  number  than  is  contained  in  the 
^neid:  and  after  he  has  made  this  quantity  of  verses  in  a  dead 
language,  unless  the  poet  should  happen  to  be  a  very  weak  man 
indeed,  he  never  makes  another  as  long  as  he  lives.  It  may  be 
urged,  and  it  is  urged,  that  this  is  of  use  in  teaching  the  deUcacies 
of  the  language.  No  doubt  it  is  of  use  for  tliis  purpose,  if  we  put 
out  of  view  the  immense  time  and  trouble  sacrificed  in  gaining 
these  little  delicacies.  It  would  be  of  use  that  we  should  go  on  till 
fifty  years  of  age  making  Latin  verses,  if  the  price  of  a  whole  life 
were  not  too  much  to  pay  for  it.  We  effect  our  object;  but  we  do 
it  at  the  price  of  something  greater  than  our  object.  And  whence 
comes  it,  that  the  expenditure  of  life  and  labour  is  totally  put  out 
of  the  calculation,  when  Latin  and  Greek  are  to  be  attained  ?  In 
every  other  occupation,  the  question  is  fairly  stated  between  the 
attainment,  and  the  time  employed  in  the  pursuit;  —  but,  in  classical 
learning,  it  seems  to  be  sufficient  if  the  least  possible  good  is  gained 
by  the  greatest  possible  exertion ;  if  the  end  is  anything,  and  the 
means  everything.  It  is  of  some  importance  to  speak  and  write 
French ;  and  innumerable  delicacies  would  be  gained  by  writing 
ten  thousand  French  verses  :  but  it  makes  no  part  of  our  education 
to  write  French  poetry.  It  is  of  some  importance  that  there  should 
be  good  botanists  ;  but  no  botanist  can  repeat,  by  heart,  the  names 
of  all  the  plants  in  the  known  world ;  nor  is  any  astronomer  ac- 
quainted Avith  the  appellation  and  magnitude  of  every  star  in  the 
map  of  the  heavens.  The  only  department  of  human  knowledge 
in  which  there  can  be  no  excess,  no  arithmetic,  no  balance  of  profit 
and  loss,  is  classical  learning. 

The  prodigious  honour  in  which  Latin  verses  are  held  at  public 
schools,  is  surely  the  most  absurd  of  all  absurd  distinctions.  You 
rest  all  reputation  upon  doing  that  which  is  a  natural  gift,  and 
which  no  labour  can  attain.  If  a  lad  won't  learn  the  words  of  a 
language,  his  degradation  in  the  school  is  a  very  natural  punish- 
ment for  his  disobedience,  or  liis  indolence ;  but  it  would  be  as 
reasonable  to  expect  that  all  boys  should  be  witty,  or  beautiful,  as 
that  they  should  be  poets.  In  either  case,  it  would  be  to  make  an 
accidental,  unattainable,  and  not  a  very  important  gift  of  nature, 
the  only,  or  the  principal,  test  of  merit.  This  is  the  reason  why 
boys,  who  make  a  very  considerable  figure  at  school,  so  very  often 
make  no  figure  in  the  world; — and  Avhy  other  lads,  who  are 


126  WOEKS   OF  IMAGINATION. 

passed  over  without  notice,  turn  out  to  be  valuable,  important 
men.  The  test  established  in  the  world  is  widelj^  different  from 
that  established  in  a  place  which  is  presumed  to  be  a  preparation 
for  the  world ;  and  the  head  of  a  public  school,  who  is  a  perfect 
miracle  to  liis  contemporaries,  finds  himself  shrink  into  absolute  in- 
significance, because  he  has  nothing  else  to  command  respect  or 
regard,  but  a  talent  for  fugitive  poetry  in  a  dead  language. 

The  present  state  of  classical  education  cultivates  the  imagina- 
tion a  great  deal  too  much,  and  other  habits  of  mind  a  great  deal 
too  little,  and  trains  up  many  young  men  in  a  style  of  elegant 
imbecility,  utterly  unworthy  of  the  talents  with  which  nature  has 
endowed  them.  It  may  be  said,  there  are  profound  investigations, 
and  subjects  quite  powerful  enough  for  any  understanding,  to  be 
met  with  in  classical  literature.  So  there  are  ;  but  no  man  likes 
to  add  the  difficulties  of  a  language  to  the  difficulties  of  a  subject ; 
and  to  study  metaphysics,  morals,  and  politics  in  Greek,  when  the 
Greek  alone  is  study  enough  without  them.  In  all  foreign  lan- 
guages, the  most  popular  works  are  works  of  imagination.  Even 
in  the  French  language,  which  we  know  so  well,  for  one  serious 
work  which  has  any  currency  m  this  country,  we  have  twenty 
which  are  mere  works  of  imagination.  This  is  stiU  more  true  in 
classical  literature ;  because  what  their  poets  and  orators  have  left 
us,  is  of  infinitely  greater  value  than  the  remains  of  their  philoso- 
phy; for,  as  society  advances,  men  think  more  accurately  and 
deeply,  and  imagine  more  tamely ;  works  of  reasoning  advance, 
and  works  of  fancy  decay.  So  that  the  matter  of  fact  is,  that  a 
classical  scholar  of  twenty-three  or  twenty-four  years  of  age,  is  ii 
man  principally  conversant  with  works  of  imagination.  His  feel- 
ings are  quick,  his  fancy  lively,  and  his  taste  good.  Talents  for 
speculation  and  origuial  inquiry  he  has  none ;  nor  has  he  formed 
the  invaluable  habit  of  pushing  things  up  to  their  first  principles,  or 
of  collecting  dry  and  unamusing  facts  as  the  materials  of  reasoning. 
All  the  solid  and  masculine  parts  of  his  understanding  are  left 
wholly  without  cultivation  ;  he  hates  the  pain  of  thinking,  and  sus- 
pects every  man  whose  boldness  and  originality  call  upon  him  to 
defend  his  opinions  and  prove  his  assertions. 

A  very  curious  argument  is  sometimes  employed  in  justification 
of  the  learned  minutite  to  which  all  young  men  are  doomed,  what- 
ever be  their  propensities  ir  future  life      What  are  you  to  do  with 


I 


JUSTICE   TO    HUMAN  LIFE.  127 

ft  young  man  up  to  the  age  of  seventeen  ?  Just  as  if  there  was 
such  a  want  of  ditliculties  to  overcome,  and  of  important  tastes  to 
inspire,  that  from  the  mere  necessity  of  doing  something,  and  the 
impossibility  of  doing  anything  else,  you  were  driven  to  the  expe- 
dient of  meti-e  and  poetry ;  as  if  a  young  man  within  that  period 
might  not  acquire  the  modern  languages,  modern  history,  experi- 
mental philosophy,  geography,  chrouolog}^,  and  a  considerable 
share  of  mathematics ;  as  if  the  memory  of  things  were  not  more 
agreeable  and  more  profitable  than  the  memory  of  words. 

The  great  objection  is,  that  we  are  not  making  the  most  of 
human  life,  when  we  constitute  such  an  extensive,  and  such  minute 
classical  erudition,  an  indispensable  article  in  education.  Up  to  a 
certain  point  we  Avould  educate  every  young  man  in  Latin  and 
Greek ;  but  to  a  point  far  short  of  that  to  which  this  species  of 
education  is  now  carried.  Afterward,  we  would  grant  to  classical 
erudition  as  high  honours  as  to  every  other  department  of  knowl- 
edge, but  not  higher.  We  would  place  it  upon  a  footing  with 
many  other  objects  of  study ;  but  allow  it  no  superiority.  Good 
scholars  would  be  as  certainly  produced  by  these  means  as  good 
chemists,  astronomers,  and  mathematicians  are  now  produced, 
without  any  direct  provision  whatsoever  for  their  production. 
Why  are  we  to  trust  to  the  diversity  of  human  tastes,  and  the 
varieties  of  human  ambition  in  everything  else,  and  distrust  it  in 
classics  alone  ?  The  passion  for  language  is  just  as  strong  as  any 
other  literary  passion.  There  are  very  good  Persian  and  Arabic 
scholars  in  this  country.  Large  heaps  of  trash  have  been  dug  up 
from  Sanscrit  ruins.  We  have  seen,  in  our  own  times,  a  clergy- 
man of  the  University  of  Oxford  complimenting  their  majesties  in 
Coptic  and  Syrophoenician  verses ;  and  yet  we  doubt  whether 
there  will  be  a  sufficient  avidity  m  literary  men  to  get  at  the  beau- 
ties of  the  finest  writers  which  the  Avorld  has  yet  seen ;  and 
1  hough  the  Bagvat  Gheeta  has  (as  can  be  proved)  met  with  human 
beings  to  translate,  and  other  human  beings  to  read  it,  we  think 
that,  in  order  to  secure  an  attention  to  Homer  and  Virgil,  we  must 
catch  up  every  man  —  whether  he  is  to  be  a  clergyman  or  a  duke 
—begin  with  him  at  six  years  of  age,  and  never  quit  him  till  he 
is  twenty ;  malcing  him  conjugate  and  decline  for  life  and  death ; 
and  so  teaching  him  to  estimate  his  progress  in  real  wisdom  as  he 
can  scan  the  verses  of  the  Greek  tratjedians. 


128  DESTRUCTION   OF   TALENT. 

The  English  clergy,  in  whose  hands  education  entirely  rest?, 
bring  np  the  first  young  men  of  the  country  as  if  thoy  were  all  to 
keep  grammar-schools  in  little  country-towns ;  and  a  nobleman, 
upon  whose  knowledge  aiid  liberality  the  honour  and  welfare  of 
his  country  may  depend,  is  diligently  worried,  for  half  his  life, 
with  the  small  pedantry  of  longs  and  shorts.  There  is  a  timid 
and  absurd  apprehension,  on  ihe  ptu't  of  ecclesiastical  tutors,  of 
letting  out  the  minds  of  youth  upon  difficult  and  important  sub- 
jects. They  fancy  that  mental  exertion  must  end  in  religious 
skepticism ;  and,  to  preserve  the  principles  of  their  pupils,  they 
confine  them  to  the  safe  and  elegant  imbecility  of  classical  learning. 
A  genuine  Oxford  tutor  would  shudder  to  hear  his  young  men 
disputing  upon  moral  and  political  truth,  forming  and  pulling  down 
theories,  and  indulging  in  aU  the  boldness  of  youthful  discussion. 
He  would  augur  nothing  from  it  but  impiety  to  God  and  treason 
to  kings.  And  yet,  who  vilifies  both  more  than  the  holy  poltroon 
who  carefully  averts  from  them  the  searching  eye  of  reason,  and 
who  knows  no  better  method  of  teaching  the  highest  duties,  than 
by  extirpating  the  finest  qualities  and  habits  of  the  mind  ?  If  our 
religion  is  a  fable  the  sooner  it  is  exploded  the  better.  If  our 
government  is  bad,  it  should  be  amended.  But  we  have  no  doubt 
of  the  truth  of  the  one,  or  of  the  excellence  of  the  other ;  and 
are  convinced  that  both  will  be  placed  on  a  firmer  basis  in  propor- 
tion as  the  minds  of  men  are  more  trained  to  the  investigation  of 
truth.  At  present,  we  act  with  the  minds  of  our  young  men  as 
the  Dutch  did  with  their  exuberant  spices.  An  infinite  quantity 
of  talent  is  annually  destroyed  in  the  universities  of  England  by 
the  miserable  jealousy  and  littleness  of  ecclesiastical  instructors. 
It  is  in  vain  to  say  we  have  produced  great  men  under  this  system. 
We  have  produced  great  men  under  all  systems.  Every  Englishman 
must  pass  half  his  life  in  learning  Latin  and  Greek ;  and  classical 
learning  is  supposed  to  have  produced  the  talents  which  it  has  not 
been  able  to  extinguish.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  prevent  great 
men  from  rising  up  under  any  system  of  education,  however  bad. 
Teach  men  demonology  or  astrology,  and  you  will  still  have  a 
certain  portion  of  original  genius,  in  spite  of  these  or  any  other 
branches  of  ignorance  and  foUy. 

There  is  a  delusive  sort  of  splendour  in  a  vast  body  of  men 
j)ursuing  one  object,  and  tJioroughly  obtaining  it;  and  yet,  though 


CLAIMS   OP  SCIENCE.  12^* 

il  je  very  spk'uclicl,  it  is  far  from  being  useful.  Classical  literature 
is  the  great  object  at  Oxford.  INIany  minds  so  employed  have  prcf- 
duced  many  works  and  much  fame  in  that  department ;  but  if  all 
liberal  arts  and  sciences  useful  to  human  life  had  been  taught  then^ 
— if  some  had  dedicated  themselves  to  chemistry,  some  to  mathe- 
matics, some  to  experimental  philosophy  —  and  if  every  attainment 
had  been  honoured  in  the  mixed  ratio  of  its  difficulty  and  utility 
—  the  system  of  such  a  University  would  have  been  much  more 
valuable,  but  the  splendour  of  its  name  something  less. 

When  a  University  has  been  doing  useless  things  for  a  long 
time,  it  appears  at  first  degrading  to  them  to  be  useful.  A  set  of 
lectures  upon  political  economy  would  be  discouraged  in  Oxford,* 
probably  despised,  probably  not  permitted.  To  discuss  the  enclo- 
sure of  commons,  and  to  dwell  upon  imports  and  exports — to 
come  so  near  to  common  life,  would  seem  to  be  undignified  and 
contemptible.  In  the  same  manner,  the  Parr  or  the  Bentley  of 
his  day,  Avould  be  scandalized  in  a  University  to  be  put  on  a  level 
with  the  discoverer  of  a  neutral  salt ;  and  yet,  what  other  measure 
is  there  of  dignity  in  intellectual  labour,  but  usefulness  and  diffi- 
culty ?  And  what  ought  the  term  University  to  mean,  but  a  place 
where  every  science  is  taught  which  is  liberal,  and  at  the  same 
time  useful  to  mankind  ?  Nothing  would  so  much  tend  to  bring 
classical  literature  within  proper  bounds,  as  a  steady  and  invariable 
appeal  to  these  tests  in  our  appreciation  of  all  human  knowledge. 
The  puffed-up  pedant  would  collapse  into  his  proper  size,  and  the 
maker  of  verses,  and  the  rememberer  of  words,  would  soon  assume 
that  station  which  is  the  lot  of  those  who  go  up  unbidden  to  the 
upper  places  of  the  feast. 

We  should  be  sorry  if  what  we  have  said  should  appear  too 
contemptuous  toward  classical  learning,  which  we  most  sincerely 
hope  will  always  be  held  in  great  honour  in  this  country,  though 
M'e  certainly  do  not  wish  to  it  that  exclusive  honour  which  it  at 
present  enjoys.  A  great  classical  scholar  is  an  ornament,  and  an 
important  acquisition  to  his  country ;  but,  in  a  place  of  education, 
we  would  give  to  all  knowledge  an  equal  chance  for  distinction ; 
and  would  trust  to  the  varieties  of  human  disposition  that  every 
science  worth  cultivation  would  be  cultivated.  Looking  always  to 
real  utility  as  our  guide,  we  should  see,  with  equal  pleasure,  a 
*  They  have  since  been  established. 


130  OBJECTS    OF   EDUCATION. 

Studious  and  inquisitive  mind  arranging  the  productions  of  nature, 
investigating  the  qualities  of  bodies,  or  mastering  tlie  diflicuhies 
of  the  learned  languages.  We  should  not  care  whether  he  Avere 
chemist,  naturalist,  or  scholar ;  because  we  know  it  to  be  as  neces- 
sary that  matter  should  be  studied,  and  subdued  to  the  use  of  man, 
as  that  taste  should  be  gratified,  and  imagination  inflamed. 

In  those  who  were  destined  for  the  church,  we  would  un- 
doubtedly encourage  classical  learning  more  than  in  any  other 
body  of  men ;  but  if  we  had  to  do  with  a  young  man  going  out 
into  public  life,  we  would  exhort  him  to  contemn,  or  at  least  not  to 
affect,  the  reputation  of  a  great  scholar,  but  to  educate  himself  for 
the  offices  of  civil  life.  He  should  learn  what  the  constitution  of 
his  country  really  was  —  how  it  had  grown  into  its  present  state  — 
the  perils  that  had  threatened  it — the  malignity  that  had  attacked 
It — the  courage  that  had  fought  for  it,  and  the  wisdom  that  had 
made  it  great.  We  would  bring  strongly  before  his  mind  the 
characters  of  those  Englishmen  who  have  been  the  steady  friends 
of  the  public  happiness ;  and  by  their  examples,  would  breathe 
into  him  a  pure  public  taste  which  should  keep  him  untainted  in 
all  the  vicissitudes  of  political  fortune.  We  would  teach  him  to 
burst  through  the  well-paid,  and  the  pernicious  cant  of  indiscrimi- 
nate loyalty;  and  to  know  his  sovereign  only  as  he  discharged 
those  duties,  and  displayed  those  qualities,  for  which  the  blood  and 
the  treasure  of  his  people  are  confided  to  his  hands.  We  should 
deem  it  of  the  utmost  importance  that  his  attention  was  directed 
to  the  true  principles  of  legislation — what  effect  laws  can  produce 
upon  opinions,  and  opinions  upon  laws — what  subjects  are  fit  for 
legislative  interference,  and  when  men  may  be  left  to  the  manage- 
ment of  their  own  interests.  The  mischief  occasioned  by  bad 
laws,  and  the  perplexity  which  arises  fi'om  numerous  laws — the 
causes  of  national  wealth — the  relations  of  foreign  trade — the 
encouragement  of  manufactures  and  agriculture — the  fictitious 
wealth  occasioned  by  paper  credit — the  laws  of  population — the 
management  of  poverty  and  mendicity  —  the  use  and  abuse  of 
monopoly — the  theory  of  taxation — the  consequences  of  tlie 
public  debt.  These  are  some  of  the  subjects,  and  some  of  the 
branches  of  civil  education  to  which  we  would  turn  the  minds  of 
future  judges,  future  senators,  and  future  noblemen.  After  the 
first  period  of  life  had  been  given  up  to  the  cultivation  of  the 


REPLICATION  OP   A   REVIEWER,  131 

classics,  and  the  reasoning  powers  were  now  beginning  to  evolve 
themselves,  these  are  some  of  the  propensities  in  study  which  we 
■would  endeavour  to  inspire.  Gi'eat  knowledge,  at  such  a  period 
of  life,  we  could  not  convey ;  but  we  might  fix  a  decided  taste  for 
its  acquisition,  and  a  strong  disposition  to  respect  it  in  others. 
The  formation  of  some  great  scholars  we  should  certainly  pro- 
vent,  and  hinder  many  from  learning  what,  in  a  few  years,  they 
would  necessarily  forget;  but  this  loss  would  be  well  repaid — if 
we  could  show  the  future  rulers  of  the  country  that  thought  and 
labour  which  it  requires  to  make  a  nation  happy — or  if  Ave  could 
inspire  them  with  that  love  of  public  virtue,  which,  after  religion, 
we  most  solemnly  believe  to  be  the  brightest  ornament  of  the  mind 
of  man. 

[The  discussion  wliich  grew  out  of  the  preceding  and  other  articles  in  the 
Edinburgh  Review,  has  been  ah-eady  noticed  (Memoir  ante  p.  45).  The 
reader  may  be  interested  in  a  few  passages  of  Smith's  reply  to  the  strictures 
of  Copleston.  They  are  taken  from  the  article,  "  Calumnies  Against  Ox- 
ford."    Ed.  Rev.,  April,  1810.] 

KEPLY   TO    COPLESTON. 

Come  we  next  to  the  third  mould  or  crucible  into  which  this 
Oxford  gentleman  has  poured  his  melted  lead, — viz.  his  reply  to 
our  more  general  observations  on  the  use  and  abuse  of  classical 
learning,  and  on  the  undue  importance  assigned  to  it  in  English 
education ;  and  as  this  part  of  his  work  is  more  remarkable  than 
the  rest  for  its  ostentatious  dullness,  and  its  gross  departure  from 
the  language  and  manners  of  a  gentleman,  we  must  be  excused  for 
bestowing  on  it  a  little  more  of  our  time  than  we  are  in  the  habit 
of  wasting  on  such  men  and  such  things 

Admitting  that  a  young  man,  though  occupied  in  overcoming 
verbal  difficulties,  has  acquired  the  same  real  knowledge  as  if  his 
path  had  been  completely  without  obstruction  —  what  is  all  this 
to  the  purpose?  Our  objection  is  not,  that  classical  knowledge 
is  not  a  good,  but  that  it  is  not  the  only  good.  We  contend  that 
aU  young  men  need  not  be  made  great  classical  scholars ;  that 
some  may  be  allowed  to  deviate  into  mathematical  knowlbdge — ■ 
some  into  chemistry,  some  into  natural  philosophy — some  into  po- 
litical economy  —  some  into  modern  languages;  that  all  these  oc- 
cupations, though  not,  perhaps,  superior  in  importance  to  classical 


132  CRANZIUS   AND   ERNESTI. 

cnulilion,  are  not  inferior  to  it;  that  we  are  making  only  one 
article,  when  we  ought  to  be  making  many ;  that  the  sole  occupa- 
tion of  all  young  Englishmen,  educated  at  Oxford,  is  to  become 
Latin  and  Greek  scholai's.  Of  the  verses  so  much  admired,  and 
so  indiscreetly  quoted  by  this  gentleman,  we  shall  only  say, 

Tale  tuum  nobis  carmen,  divine  poeta, 

Quale  soioor. 

The  encomiast  should  remember,  that  his  great  model  was  remark- 
ably careful  of  committing  himself  in  print :  and  again  and  again 
we  warn  our  author  to  beware  of  opportunities  ;  they  will,  one  day 
or  another,  prove  his  ruin. 

We  did  not  say  that  poetry  only  is  read  in  classical  education : 
but  that  the  most  valuable  works  which  the  ancients  have  left  us. 
are  their  works  of  fancy ;  that  these  are,  beyond  all  comparison, 
more  read  than  their  works  either  of  history  or  philosophy ;  and 
that  this,  joined  to  the  horrible  absurdity  of  verse-making,  does 
(where  classical  education  does  not  end  in  downright  pedantry) 
often  make  it  a  mere  cultivation  of  the  imagination  at  the  expense 
of  every  other  faculty.  Sometimes,  indeed,  as  in  the  melancholy 
instance  before  us,  this  price  is  paid  for  imagination,  and  the  arti- 
cle never  delivered. 

Shocked  and  alarmed  as  this  monk,  or  rather  let  us  say,  tliis 
nun,  is  with  the  mention  of  the  amours  of  Pan  and  Jupiter — we 
must  still  maintain,  that  the  loves  of  the  heathen  gods  and  god- 
desses are  the  principal  subjects  by  which  the  attention  of  young 
men  is  engaged  in  the  first  years  of  education.  We  are  sorry  to 
call  up  a  blush  into  the  face  of  this  sly  tutor ;  but  the  fact  is  as  we 
state  it. 

The  observations  of  this  writer  are,  like  children's  cradles  —  fa- 
miliar to  old  women — sometimes  empty— -sometimes  full  of  noisy 
imbecility — and  often  lulling  to  sleep.  There  never,  perhaps, 
was  a  more  striking  instance  of  silly  and  contemptible  pedantry, 
than  the  long,  dull  and  serious  answer  which  he  has  taken  the 
trouble  to  make  to  our  joke  about  Oranzius,  and  the  Ernesti. 
What  can  it  possibly  signify,  whether  we  used  the  name  of  one 
great  fool,  or  of  another  great  fool  ?  Let  this  writer  put  his  own 
name  to  his  productions,  and  it  shall  take  the  place  of  Cranzius  in 
our  next  edition 

One  who  passes   for  a  great  man  in  a  little  place,  generally 


A   BARNDOOU   FOWL.  1S3 

mak  is  himself  very  ridiculous  when  he  ventures  out  of  it.  jSTo thing 
can  3xceed  the  pomp  and  ti'ash  of  this  gentleman's  observations ; 
they  can  only  proceed  from  the  habit  of  Uving  with  third-rate  per- 
sons ;  from  possessing  the  riglit  of  compelluig  boys  to  listen  to 
him ;  and  from  making  a  very  cruel  use  of  this  privilege.  More 
equal  company  could  never  have  made  him  an  able  man  ;  but  they 
would  soon  have  persuaded  him  to  hold  his  tongue.  That  there  is 
something  in  this  gentleman,  we  do  not  deny  ;  but  he  does  not  ap- 
pear to  us  to  have  the  slightest  conception  how  very  little  that 
something  i?,  nor  in  what  his  moderate  talents  consist.  He  is 
evidently  intended  for  a  plain,  plodding,  everyday  personage — to 
do  no  foolish  things  —  and  to  say  no  wise  ones  —  to  walk  in  the 
cart-harness  that  is  prepared  for  him — and  to  step  into  every  com- 
monplace notion  that  prevails  in  the  times  in  which  he  happens 
to  exist.  If  he  would  hold  his  tongue,  and  carefully  avoid  all  op- 
portunities of  making  a  display,  he  is  just  the  description  of  pert-on 
to  enjoy  a  very  great  reputation  among  those  whose  good  opinion 
is  not  worth  having.  Unfortunately,  he  must  pretend  to  liberality 
— to  wit — to  eloquence  —  and  to  fine  writing.  He  must  show  his 
brother-tutors  that  he  is  not  afraid  of  Edinburgh  Reviewers.  If 
he  returns  rolled  in  the  mud,  broken-headed,  and  bellowing  with 
pain,  who  has  he  but  himself  to  blame  ? 

He  who  has  seen  a  barn-door  fowl  flying — and  only  he  —  can 
form  some  conception  of  this  tutor's  eloquence.  With  his  neck 
and  hinder  parts  brought  into  a  line  —  with  loud  screams,  and  all 
the  agony  of  feathered  fatness  —  the  jwnderous  little  glutton  flaps 
himself  up  into  the  air,  and,  soaring  four  feet  above  the  level  of 
our  earth,  falls  dull  and  breathless  on  his  native  dunghill.  Of  these 
sublime  excursions,  let  the  following  suffice  as  specimens : 

"There  are  emotions  which  eloquence  can  raise,  and  which  lead  to  loftier 
thoughts,  and  nobler  aspirin}j!;s,  than  commonly  spring  up  in  the  private  in- 
tercourse of  men  :  when  the  latent  flame  of  genius  has  been  kindled  by  some 
transient  ray,  shot  perhaps  at  random,  and  aimed  least  where  it  took  the 
greatest  effect,  but  which  has  set  all  the  kindred  sparks  that  lay  there,  in 
such  a  heat  and  stir  as  that  no  torpid  indolence,  or  low,  earthy-rooted  cares, 
Bhall  ever  again  smother  or  keep  them  down.  From  this  high  lineage  may 
spring  a  nevcr-fiiiling  race ;  few,  indeed,  but  more  illustrious  because  they  aro 
few,  through  whom  the  royal  blood  of  philosophy  shall  descend,"  &e.  &c.  pp. 
148,  149. 

"  We  want  not  niei   vho  are  clipped  and  espaliered  into  any  form  which  the 


L.34  UTILITY   OF   KNOWLEDGE. 

wliini  ol  the  gardener  ni.ay  dictate,  or  the  narrow  limits  of  his  parterre  re- 
quire. 1  .ct  our  saplings  take  their  full  spread,  and  send  forth  their  vigorous 
shoots  in  sill  the  boldness  and  variety  of  nature.  Their  luxuriance  must  be 
pruned  ;  their  distortions  rectified ;  the  rust  and  canker  and  caterpillar  of  vice 
carefully  kept  from  them :  we  must  dig  round  them,  and  ivater  them,  and  re- 
plenish the  exhaustion  of  the  soil  by  'continual  dressing."  p.  157. 

One  more,  and  we  have  done  lor  ever. 

"  That  finished  offspring  of  genius  starts  not,  like  Minerva,  from  the  head  of 
Jupitei',  perfect  at  once  in  stature,  and  clad  in  complete  armour ;  but  is  the 
produce  of  slow  birth,  and  often  of  a  hard  dcUvery ;  the  tender  nursling  of 
many  an  infant  year  —  the  pupil  of  a  severe  school,  formed  and  chastened  by 
a  persevering  discipline."  p.  129. 

We  question  if  mere  natural  dullness,  unaided  by  puncli,  ever 

before  produced  such  writing  as  this 

We  have  already  shown,  how  very  imperfectly  this  gentleman 
understands  his  own  silly  art  of  verbal  criticism ;  but  when  he 
comes  upon  subjects  of  real  importance,  nothing  can  well  exceed 
the  awkwardness  of  his  movements ;  —  he  is  like  a  coach-horse  on 
the  trottoir — his  feet  don't  seem  made  to  stand  on  such  places. 
The  objections  which  he  makes  to  the  science  of  chemistry,  are 
really  curious — that  it  raises  and  multiplies  the  means  of  subsis- 
tence, and  terminates  merely  in  the  bodily  wants  of  man :  in  other 
words  —  donum  rationis  divinitus  datum  in  usus  Immani  generis 
impendit.  And  what,  we  should  be  glad  to  know,  is  the  main  ob- 
ject of  most  branches  of  human  knowledge,  if  it  be  not  to  minister 
to  the  bodily  wants  of  man  ?  What  is  the  utility  of  mathematics, 
but  as  they  are  brought  to  bear  upon  navigation,  astronomy,  me- 
chanics, and  so  upon  bodily  wants  ?  What  is  the  object  of  medi- 
cine?— what  of  anatomy? — what  greater  purposes  have  law 
and  politics  in  view,  but  to  consult  our  bodily  wants  —  to  protect 
those  who  minister  to  them — and  to  arrange  the  conflicting  inter- 
ests and  pretensions  which  these  wants  occasion  ?  Here  is  an  ex- 
act instance  of  the  mischief  of  verbal  studies.  This  man  lias  been 
so  long  engaged  in  trifles  which  have  the  most  remote  and  faint 
connection  with  human  affairs,  that  a  science  appears  to  him  abso- 
lutely undignified  and  degrading,  because  it  ministers  to  the  bodily 
wants  of  mankind — as  if  one  of  the  greatest  objects  of  human 
wisdom  had  not  at  all  times  been  to  turn  the  properties  of  matter 
to  the  use  of  man  :  and  then  he  asks,  if  ministration  to  bodily  wants 
is  the  test  of  merif  in  any  science,  and  a  reason  for  its  reception  in 


CHEMISTRY.  135 

places  of  education,  why  the  mechanical  arts  are  excluded  ?  But, 
need  this  man  —  need  any  man — need  any  boy  who  has  been 
baptized  and  breeched,  be  told,  that  any  single  mechanical  art  is 
less  honoured  than  chemistry,  only  because  it  is  less  useful,  and  at 
the  same  time  less  difficult? — or,  in  other  words,  that  every  branch 
of  human  knowledge  is  estimated,  not  by  its  utility  alone,  but  in 
the  mixed  ratio  of  its  utihty  and  its  difficulty ;  and  that  it  is  this  very 
method  of  deciding  upon  merit,  that  renders  the  pubUcation  before 
us  so  utterly  contemptible  as  it  is  ? 

It  is  impossible  to  follow  this  gentleman  into  all  the  ditches  into 
which  he  tumbles,  or  through  all  the  sloughs  in  which  he  wades. 
The  critic  must  go  on  noticing  only  those  effusions  of  dullness 
which  are  the  most  prominent  —  Simuna  popavera  carpens. 

We  are  quite  convinced  this  instructor  confounds  together  the 
chemist  of  the  shops  and  the  philosophical  chemist :  he  may  be  as- 
sured, however  (whatever  he  may  hear  to  the  contrary),  that  they 
are  two  distinct  classes  of  persons ;  and  that  there  are  actually 
many  ingenious  persons  engaged  in  investigating  the  properties  of 
bodies,  who  never  sold  a  mercurial  powder  or  an  ounce  of  glauber 
salts  in  their  lives.  By  way  of  exercise,  w^e  would  wish  this  writer 
to  reflect,  fasting,  upon  the  alteration  produced  in  human  affairs  by 
glass  and  by  gunpowder — and  then  to  consider  whether  chemistry 
is  solely  occupied  with  the  bodily  wants  of  mankind,  and  with  the 
improvement  of  manufactures ;  and  though  we  are  aware  that  his 
first  guess  will  be,  that  the  invention  of  these  two  substances  has 
made  it  more  easy  to  drink  port  wine,  and  to  kill  partridges,  yet  we 
can  assure  him,  they  have  produced  effects  of  still  greater  impor- 
tance to  mankind.  We  are  not  indulging  in  any  pleasantry  for  the 
mere  sake  of  misleading  him,  but  honestly  stating  the  plain  truth. 

The  moment  an  envious  pedant  sees  anything  written  Avith 
pleasantry',  he  comforts  himself  that  it  must  be  superficial.  Whe- 
ther the  Reviewer  is  or  is  not  considered  as  a  superficial  person 
by  competent  judges,  he  neither  knows  nor  cares  ;  but  says  what 
he  has  to  say  after  his  own  manner — always  confident,  that,  what- 
ever he  may  be,  he  shall  be  found  out,  and  classed  as  he  deserves. 
The  Oxford  tutor  may  very  possibly  have  given  a  just  account  of 
him ;  buf  his  reasons  for  that  judgment  are  certainly  wrong :  for 
it  is  by  no  means  impossible  to  be  entertaining  and  instructive  at 
the  same  time ;  and  the  readers  of  this  pamplilet  (if  any^  can 


136  MEN   AND    WOMEN. 

never  doubt,  after  sucli  a  specimen,  how  easy  it  is  to  be,  in  one 

small  production,  both  very  frivolous  and  very  tiresome 

"We  had  almost  forgotten  to  state,  that  this  author's  substitutes 
f6r  lectures  in  moral  philosophy,  are  sermons  delivered  from  the 
University  pulpit.  He  appears  totally  ignorant  of  what  the  terms 
moral  philosophy  mean.  But  enough  of  him  and  of  his  ignorance. 
TVe  leave  him  now  to  his  longs  and  shorts. 

I  nunc,  et  versus  tecum  meditare  canoros. 


FEMALE    EDUCATION.* 

A  GREAT  deal  has  been  said  of  the  original  difference  of  capa- 
city between  men  and  women ;  as  if  women  were  more  quick,  and 
men  more  judicious  —  as  if  women  were  more  remarkable  for 
delicacy  of  association,  and  men  for  stronger  powers  of  attention. 
All  this,  we  confess,  appears  to  us  very  fanciful.  That  there  is  a 
difference  in  the  understandings  of  the  men  and  the  women  we 
every  day  meet  with,  everybody,  we  suppose,  must  perceive  ;  but 
there  is  none  surely  which  may  not  be  accounted  for  by  the  dif- 
ference of  circumstances  in  Avhich  they  have  been  placed,  without 
referring  to  any  conjectural  difference  of  original  conformation  of 
mind.  As  long  as  boys  and  girls  run  about  in  the  dirt,  and  trundle 
hoops  together,  they  are  both  precisely  ahke.  If  you  catch  up 
one  half  of  these  creatures,  and  train  them  to  a  particular  set  of 
actions  and  opinions,  and  the  other  lialf  to  a  perfectly  opposite  set, 
of  course  their  understandings  Avill  differ,  as  one  or  the  other  sort 
of  occupations  has  called  this  or  that  talent  into  action.  There  is 
surely  no  occasion  to  go  mto  any  deeper  or  more  abstruse  reason- 
ing, in  order  to  explain  so  very  simple  a  phenomenon.  Taking  it, 
then,  for  granted,  that  nature  has  been  as  bountiful  of  understand 
ing  to  one  sex  as  the  other,  it  is  incumbent  on  us  to  consider  what 
are  the  principal  objections  commonly  made  against  the  communi- 
cation of  a  greater  share  of  knowledge  to  women  than  commonly 
"alls  to  their  lot  at  present :  for  though  it  may  be  doubted  whether 
women  should  learn  all  that  rnen  leai'n,  the  immense  disparity 
which  now  exists  between  their  knowledge  we  sliould  hai-dly  think 
could  admit  of  any  rational  defence.  It  is  not  easy  to  imagine 
that  there  can  be  any  just  cause  why  a  woman  of  forty  should  be 
*Ed.  Kev.,  Jan.,  1810. 


LEISURE   OF   THE   SEXES.  lo7 

more  ignoi'ant  than  a  boy  of  twelve  years  of  age.  If  there  be 
any  good  at  all  in  female  .gnoranee,  this  (to  use  a  very  colloquial 
plu'ase)  is  surely  too  much  of  a  good  thing. 

Something  in  this  question  must  depend,  no  doubt,  uj^on  tlie 
leisure  which  either  sex  enjoys  for  the  cultivation  of  their  under- 
standings:—  and  we  can  not  help  thinking,  that  women  have  fully 
as  much,  if  not  more,  idle  time  upon  their  hands  than  men. 
Women  are  excluded  from  all  the  serious  business  of  the  world ; 
men  are  laAvyers,  physicians,  clergymen,  apothecaries,  and  justices 
of  the  peace  —  sources  of  exertion  wliich  consume  a  great  deal 
more  time  than  producing  and  suckling  children ;  so  tliat,  if  the 
thing  is  a  thing  that  ought  to  be  done  —  if  the  attainments  of  litera- 
ture are  objects  really  worthy  the  attention  of  females,  they  can 
not  plead  the  want  of  leisure  as  an  excuse  for  indolence  and  neg- 
lect. The  lawyer  avIio  pa^^ses  his  day  in  exasperating  the  bicker- 
ings of  Roe  and  Doe,  is  certainly  as  much  engaged  as  his  lady 
who  has  the  whole  of  the  morning  before  her  to  correct  the  chil- 
dren and  pay  the  bills.  The  apothecary,  who  rushes  from  an  aei 
of  phlebotomy  in  the  Avestern  parts  of  the  town  to  insinuate  a  bolus 
in  the  east,  is  surely  as  completely  absorbed  as  that  fortunate  fe- 
male who  is  darning  the  garment,  or  preparing  the  repast  of  her 
^sculapius  at  home ;  and,  in  every  degree  and  situation  of  life,  it 
seems  that  men  must  necessai'ily  be  exposed  to  more  serious  de- 
mands upon  their  time  and  attention  than  can  possibly  be  the  case 
Avith  respect  to  the  other  sex.  We  are  speaking  always  of  the 
fair  demands  which  ought  to  be  made  upon  the  time  and  attention 
of  women ;  for,  as  the  matter  now  stands,  the  time  of  women  is 
considered  as  worth  nothing  at  all.  Daughters  are  kept  to  occu- 
pations in  scAving,  patching,  mantua-making,  and  mending,  by 
wluch  it  is  impossible  they  can  earn  tenpence  a  day.  The  intel- 
lectual improvement  of  Avomen  is  considered  to  be  of  such  subordi- 
nate importance,  that  tAventy  pounds  paid  for  needlework  Avould 
give  to  a  Avliole  family  leisure  to  acquire  a  fund  of  real  knoAvledge. 
Tliey  are  kept  with  nimble  fingers  and  vacant  understandings  till 
the  season  for  improvement  is  utterly  passed  aAA'ay,  and  all  chance 
of  forming  more  important  habits  completely  lost.  We  do  not 
therefore  say  that  Avomen  have  more  leisure  than  men,  if  it  be 
necessary  that  they  should  lead  the  life  of  artisans ;  but  Ave  make 
this  assertion  only  upon  the  su})position,  that  it  is  of  some  impor- 


138  PEDANTRY. 

tance  women  should  be  instructed;  and  that  many  ordinary  occu- 
pations, for  which  a  Uttle  money  will  find  a  better  substitute,  should 
be  sacrificed  to  this  consideration. 

We  bar,  in  this  discussion,  any  objection  which  proceeds  from 
the  mere  novelt}^  of  teaching  women  more  than  they  are  already 
taught.  It  may  be  useless  that  their  education  should  be  improved, 
or  it  may  be  pernicious ;  and  these  are  the  fair  grounds  on  which 
the  question  may  be  argued.  But  those  who  cannot  bring  their 
minds  to  consider  such  an  unusual  extension  of  knowledge,  without 
connecting  with  it  some  sensation  of  the  ludicrous,  should  remem- 
ber that,  in  the  progress  from  absolute  ignorance,  there  is  a  period 
when  cultivation  of  the  mind  is  new  to  every  rank  and  description  of 
persons.  A  century  ago,  who  would  have  believed  that  country 
gentlemen  could  be  brought  to  read  and  spell  with  the  ease  and 
accuracy  which  we  now  so  frequently  remark  —  or  supposed  that 
they  could  be  carried  up  even  to  the  elements  of  ancient  and  mod- 
ern history  ?  Nothing  is  more  common,  or  more  stupid,  than  to 
fake  the  actual  for  the  possible — to  believe  that  all  which  is,  is  all 
which  can  be ;  first  to  laugh  at  every  proposed  deviation  from 
practice  as  impossible  —  then,  when  it  is  carried  into  effect,  to  be 
astonished  that  it  did  not  take  place  before. 

It  is  said,  that  the  effect  of  knowledge  is  to  make  women  pe- 
dantic and  affected ;  and  that  nothing  can  be  more  offensive  than 
to  see  a  woman  stepping  out  of  the  natural  modesty  of  her  sex  to 
make  an  ostentatious  display  of  her  literary  attainments.  This 
may  be  true  enough ;  but  the  answer  is  so  trite  and  obvious,  that 
we  are  almost  ashamed  to  make  it.  All  affectation  and  display 
proceed  from  the  supposition  of  possessing  something  better  than 
the  rest  of  the  Avorld  possesses.  Nobody  is  vain  of  possessing  two 
legs  and  two  arms  ; — because  that  is  the  precise  quantity  of  either 
sort  of  limb  which  everybody  possesses.  "Who  ever  heard  a  lady 
boast  that  she  understood  French? — for  no  other  reason,  that  we 
know  of,  but  because  everybody  in  these  days  does  understand 
French  ;  and  though  there  may  be  some  disgrace  in  being  ignorant 
of  that  language,  there  is  little  or  no  merit  in  its  acquisition.  Dif- 
fuse knowledge  generally  among  women,  and  you  will  at  once  cure 
the  conceit  which  knowledge  occasions  while  it  is  rare.  Vanity 
and  conceit  we  shall  of  course  witness  in  men  and  women  as  long 
as  the  world  endures:  but  by  multiplying  the  attainments  upon 


FORCE   OP  NATURE.  139 

which  these  feelhigs  are  foumled,  you  increase  the  difflcuhy  of  in- 
dulging them,  and  render  them  much  more  tolerable,  by  making 
them  the  proofs  of  a  much  higher  merit.  When  learning  ceases 
to  be  uncommon  among  women,  learned  women  will  cease  to  be 
aflfected. 

A  great  many  of  the  lesser  and  more  obscure  duties  of  life  ne- 
cessarily devolve  upon  the  female  sex.  The  arrangement  of  all 
household  matters,  and  the  care  of  children  in  their  early  infancy, 
must  of  course  depend  upon  them.  Now,  there  is  a  very  general 
notion,  that  the  moment  you  put  the  education  of  women  upon  a 
better  footing  than  it  is  at  present,  at  that  moment  there  will  be  an 
end  of  all  domestic  economy ;  and  that,  if  you  once  suffer  women 
to  eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge,  the  rest  of  the  family  will  very 
soon  be  reduced  to  the  same  kind  of  aerial  and  unsatisfactory  diet. 
These,  and  all  such  opinions,  are  referable  to  one  great  and  com- 
mon cause  of  error ;  that  man  does  everything,  and  that  nature 
does  nothing;  and  that  everything  we  see  is  referable  to  positive 
institution  rather  than  to  original  feeling.  Can  anything,  for  ex- 
ample, be  more  perfectly  absurd  than  to  suppose  that  the  care  and 
perpetual  solicitude  which  a  mother  feels  for  her  children  depend 
upon  her  ignorance  of  Greek  and  mathematics  ;  and  that  she  would 
desert  an  infant  for  a  quadratic  equation  ?  We  seem  to  imagine 
that  we  can  break  in  pieces  the  solemn  institutions  of  nature,  by  the 
little  laws  of  a  boarding-school ;  and  that  the  existence  of  the  hu- 
man race  depends  upon  teaching  women  a  little  more  or  a  little 
less  ; — that  Cimmerian  ignorance  can  aid  parental  affection,  or  the 
circle  of  arts  and  sciences  produce  its  destruction.  In  the  same 
manner,  we  forget  the  principles  upon  which  the  love  of  order,  ar- 
rangement, and  all  the  arts  of  economy  depend.  They  depend  not 
upon  ignorance  nor  idleness ;  but  upon  the  poverty,  confusion,  and 
ruin  which  would  ensue  for  neglecting  them.  Add  to  these  prin- 
ciples, the  love  of  what  is  beautiful  and  magnificent,  and  the  vanity 
of  display ;  —  and  there  can  surely  be  no  reasonable  doubt  but  that 
he  order  and  economy  of  private  life  is  amply  secured  frorn  the 
perilous  inroads  of  knowledge. 

We  would  fain  know,  too,  if  knowledge  is  to  produce  such  bane- 
ful effects' upon  the  material  and  the  household  virtues,  why  this 
influence  has  not  already  been  felt  ?  Women  are  much  better  edu- 
?,iiie.<l  now  than  they  were  a  century  ago ;  but  they  are  by  no  moans 


140  SIMPLE   PLEASURES. 

loss  remarkable  for  attention  to  the  arrangements  of  their  house- 
hold, or  less  inclined  to  discharge  the  offices  of  parental  affection. 
It  would  be  very  easy  to  show,  that  the  same  objection  has  been 
made  at  all  times  to  every  improvement  in  the  education  of  both 
sexes,  and  all  ranks  —  and  been  as  uniformly  and  completely  refu- 
ted by  experience.  A  great  part  of  the  objections  made  to  the 
education  of  women,  are  rather  objections  made  to  human  nature 
than  to  the  female  sex :  for  it  is  surely  true,  that  knowledge,  where 
it  produces  any  bad  .effects  at  all,  does  as  much  mischief  to  one 
sex  as  to  the  other  —  and  gives  birth  to  fully  as  much  aiTogance, 
inattention  to  common  affairs,  and  eccentricity  among  men,  as  it 
does  among  women.  But  it  by  no  means  follows,  that  you  get  rid 
of  vanity  and  self-conceit  because  you  get  rid  of  learning.  Self- 
complacency  can  never  want  an  excuse  ;  and  the  best  way  to  make 
it  more  tolerable,  and  more  useful,  is  to  give  to  it  as  high  and  as 
dignified  an  object  as  possible.  But  at  all  events  it  is  unfair  to 
bring  forward  against  a  part  of  the  world  an  objection  which  is 
equally  powerful  against  the  whole.  When  foolish  women  think 
they  have  any  distinction,  they  are  apt  to  be  j^roud  of  it ;  so  are 
foolish  men.  But  we  appeal  to  any  one  who  has  lived  with  culti- 
vated persons  of  either  sex,  whether  he  has  not  witnessed  as  much 
pedantry,  as  much  wrongheadedness,  as  much  arrogance,  and  cer- 
tainly a  great  deal  more  rudeness,  produced  by  learning  in  men. 
than  in  women ;  therefore,  we  should  make  the  accusation  general 
— or  dismiss  it  altogether ;  though,  with  respect  to  pedantry,  the 
learned  are  certainly  a  little  unfortunate,  that  so  very  emphatic  a 
word,  which  is  occasionally  applicable  to  all  men  erabai'ked  eagerly 
in  any  jjursuit,  should  be  reserved  exclusively  for  them :  for,  as 
pedantry  is  an  ostoitatious  obtrusion  of  knowledge,  in  which  those 
who  hear  us  cannot  sympathize,  it  is  a  fault  of  which  soldiei's, 
sailors,  sportsmen,  gamesters,  cultivators,  and  all  men  engaged  in  a 
particular  occupation,  are  quite  as  guilty  as  scholars  ;  but  they  have 
the  good  fortune  to  have  the  vice  only  of  pedantry  —  while  schol- 
ai's  have  both  the  vice  and  the  name  for  it  too. 

Some  persons  are  apt  to  contrast  the  acquisition  of  important 
knowledge  with  Avhat  they  call  simple  j^leasures  ;  and  deem  it 
more  becoming  that  a  woman  should  educate  flowers,  make  friend- 
ships with  birds,  and  pick  up  plants,  than  enter  into  more  difficult 
and  fatiguing  studies.     If  a  woman  have  no  taste  and  genius  fo"* 


I 


EDUCATION   OF   WOMEN.  I'll 

higher  occupations,  let  her  engage  in  these  to  be  sure  rather  tlian 
remain  destitute  of  any  pursuit.  But  why  are  we  necessarily  to 
doom  a  girl,  whatever  be  her  taste  or  her  capacity,  to  one  unvaried 
line  of  petty  and  frivolous  occupation  ?  If  she  be  full  of  strong 
sense  and  elevated  curiosity,  can  there  be  any  reason  why  she 
should  be  diluted  and  enfeebled  down  to  a  mere  culler  of  simples, 
and  fancier  of  birds — why  books  of  history  and  reasoning  are  to 
be  torn  out  of  her  hand,  and  why  she  is  to  be  sent,  like  a  but- 
terfly, to  hover  over  the  idle  flowers  of  the  field  ?  Such  amuse- 
ments are  mnocent  to  those  Avhom  they  can  occupy  ;  but  they  are 
not  innocent  to  those  who  have  too  powerful  understandings  to  be 
occupied  by  them.  Light  broths  and  fruits  are  innocent  food  only 
to  weak  or  to  infant  stomachs ;  but  they  are  poison  to  that  organ 
in  its  perfect  and  mature  state.  But  the  great  charm  appears  to 
be  in  the  word  simplicity — simple  pleasure  !  If  by  a  simple  pleasure 
is  meant  an  innocent  pleasure,  the  observation  is  best  answered  by 
showing,  that  the  pleasure  which  results  from  the  acquisition  of 
important  knowledge  is  quite  as  innocent  as  any  pleasui'e  whatever : 
but  if  by  a  simple  pleasure  is  meant  one,  the  cause  of  which  can 
be  easily  analyzed,  or  which  does  not  last  long,  or  which  in  itself 
is  very  faint,  then  simple  pleasures  seem  to  be  very  nearly  synon- 
ymous with  small  pleasui'es :  and  if  the  simplicity  were  to  be  a 
little  increased,  the  pleasure  would  vanish  altogether. 

As  it  is  impossible  that  every  man  should  have  industry  or  activ- 
ity sufficient  to  avail  himself  of  the  advantages  of  education,  it 
is  natural  that  men  who  are  ignorant  themselves,  should  view, 
with  some  degree  of  jealousy  and  alarm,  any  proposal  for  improv- 
ing the  education  of  women.  But  such  men  may  depend  upon  it, 
however  the  system  of  female  education  may  be  exalted,  that  there 
will  never  be  wanting  a  due  proportion  of  failures  ;  and  that  after 
parents,  guardians,  and  preceptoi's,  have  done  all  in  their  power  to 
make  everybody  wise,  there  will  still  be  a  plentiful  supply  of  wo- 
men who  have  taken  special  care  to  remain  otherwise;  and  they 
may  rest  assured,  if  the  utter  extinction  of  ignorance  and  folly  be 
the  evil  they  dread,  that  their  interests  will  always  be  eifectually 
protected,  in  spite  of  every  exertion  to  the  contrary. 

We  must  in  candour  allow  that  those  women  who  begin  will 
have  something  more  to  overcome  than  may  prcbably  hereafter  be 
the  case.     "VVe  cannot  deny  the  jealousy  which  exists  among  pom- 


142  IGNOEANCE. 

pous  and  foolish  men  respecting  the  education  of  women.  There 
is  a  class  of  pedants  who  would  be  cut  short  in  the  estimation  of 
the  world  a  whole  cubit  if  it  were  generally  known  that  a  young 
lady  of  eighteen  could  be  taught  to  decline  the  tenses  of  the  mid- 
dle voice,  or  acquaint  herself  with  the  tEoUc  varieties  of  that 
celebrated  language.  Then  Avomen  have,  of  course,  all  ignorant 
men  for  enemies  to  their  instruction,  who  being  bound  (as  they 
think),  in  point  of  sex,  to  know  more,  are  not  well  pleased,  in  point 
of  fact,  to  know  less.  But,  among  men  of  sense  and  liberal  polite- 
ness, a  v.'oman  who  has  successfully  cultivated  her  mind,  without 
diminishing  the  gentleness  and  propriety  of  her  manners,  is  always 
sure  to  meet  with  a  respect  and  attention  bordering  upon  en- 
thusiasm. 

There  is  in  either  sex  a  strong  and  permanent  disposition  to 
appear  agreeable  to  the  other :  and  this  is  the  fair  answer  to  those 
who  are  fond  of  supposing,  that  a  higher  degree  of  knowledge 
would  make  women  rather  the  rivals  than  the  companions  of  men. 
Presupposing  such  a  desire  to  please,  it  seems  much  more  proba- 
ble, that  a  common  pursuit  should  be  a  fresh  source  of  interest 
than  a  cause  of  contention.  Indeed,  to  suppose  that  any  mode  of 
education  can  create  a  general  jealousy  imd  rivalry  between  the 
sexes,  is  so  very  ridiculous,  that  it  requires  only  to  be  stated  in 
order  to  be  refuted.  The  same  desire  of  pleasing  secures  all  that 
delicacy  and  reserve  which  are  of  such  inestimable  value  to 
women.  We  are  quite  astonished,  in  hearing  men  converse  on 
such  subjects,  to  find  them  attributing  such  beautiful  efFecls  to 
ignorance.  It  would  appear,  from  the  tenor  of  such  objections, 
that  ignorance  had  been  the  great  civilizer  of  the  world.  "Women 
are  dehcate  and  refined  only  because  they  are  ignorant;  they 
manage  their  household,  only  because  they  are  ignorant ;  they 
attend  to  their  children,  only  because  they  know  no  better.  Now, 
we  must  really  confess,  we  have  all  our  lives  been  so  ignorant  as 
not  to  know  the  value  of  ignorance.  We  have  always  attributed 
the  modesty  and  the  refined  manners  of  women,  to  their  being 
well  taught  in  moral  and  religious  duty — to  the  hazardous  situa- 
tion in  which  they  are  placed — to  that  perpetual  vigilance  which 
it  is  their  duty  to  exercise  over  thought,  word,  and  action  —  and  tc 
that  cultivation  of  the  mild  virtues,  which  those  who  cultivate  the 
stern  and  magnanimous  virtues  expect  at  their  hands.     After  all, 


DUTIES   OF  WOMEN.  143 

let  it  be  remembercci,  we  are  not  saying  thei'e  are  no  objections  to 
the  (lifFusion  of  knowledge  among  the  female  sex.  We  would  not 
hazard  such  a  proposition  respecting  anything ;  but  we  are  saying, 
that,  upon  the  whole,  it  is  the  best  method  of  employing  time  ;  and 
that  there  are  fewer  objections  to  it  than  to  any  other  method. 
There  are,  perhaps,  fifty  thousand  females  in  Great  Britain  who 
are  exempted  by  circumstances  from  all  necessary  labour:  but 
every  human  being  must  do  something  with  their  existence ;  and 
the  pursuit  of  knoAvledge  is,  upon  the  whole,  the  most  innocent, 
the  most  dignified,  and  the  most  useful  method  of  filling  up  that 
idleness,  of  which  there  is  always  so  large  a  portion  in  nations  far 
advanced  in  civilization.  Let  any  man  reflect,  too,  upon  the  soli- 
tary situation  in  which  women  are  placed — the  ill-treatment  to 
which  they  are  sometimes  exposed,  and  which  they  must  endure 
in  silence,  and  without  the  power  of  complaining — and  he  must 
feel  convinced  that  the  happiness  of  a  woman  will  be  materially 
increased  in  proportion  as  education  has  given  to  her  the  habit  and 
the  means  of  drawing  her  resources  from  herself. 

There  are  a  few  common  phrases  in  circulation,  respecting  the 
duties  of  women,  to  which  we  wish  to  pay  some  degree  of  atten- 
tion, because  they  are  rather  inimical  to  those  opinions  whicli  Ave 
have  advanced  on  this  subject.  Indeed,  independently  of  this, 
there  is  nothing  which  requires  more  vigilance  than  the  current 
phrases  of  the  day,  of  which  there  are  always  some  resorted  to  in 
every  dispute,  and  from  the  sovereign  authority  of  which  it  is 
often  vain  to  make  any  appeal.  "  The  true  theatre  for  a  woman 
is  the  sick-chamber;" — "Nothing  so  honourable  to  a  woman  as 
not  to  be  spoken  of  at  all."  These  two  phrases,  the  delight  of 
JVoodledom,  are  grown  into  common-places  upon  the  subject ;  and 
are  not  unfrequently  employed  to  extinguish  that  love  of  knowl- 
edge in  women,  which,  in  our  humble  opinion,  it  is  of  so  much 
importance  to  cherish.  Nothing,  certainly,  is  so  ornamental  and 
delightful  in  women  as  the  benevolent  affections ;  but  time  cannol 
be  filled  up,  and  life  employed,  with  high  and  impassioned  virtues. 
Some  of  these  feelings  are  of  rare  occurrence — all  of  short  dura- 
tion—  or  nature  would  sink  under  them.  A  scene  of  distress  and 
anguish  is  an  occasion  where  the  finest  qualities  of  the  female 
mind  may  be  displayed ;  but  it  is  a  monstrous  exaggeration  to  tell 
women  that  they  are  born  only  for  scenes  of  distress  and  anguislv 


144  NOTORIETY. 

Nurse  father,  mother,  sister,  and  brother,  if  they  want  it ;  it  would 
be  a  violation  of  the  plainest  duties  to  neglect  them.  But,  when 
we  are  talking  of  the  common  occupations  of  life,  do  not  let  us 
mistake  the  accidents  for  the  occupations ;  when  we  are  arguing 
how  the  twenty -three  hours  of  the  day  are  to  be  filled  up,  it  is  idle 
to  tell  us  of  those  feelings  and  agitations  above  the  level  of  com- 
mon existence,  which  may  employ  the  remaining  hour.  Com- 
passion, and  every  other  virtue,  are  the  great  objects  we  all  ought 
to  have  in  view ;  but  no  man  (and  no  woman)  can  fill  up  the 
twenty-four  hours  by  acts  of  virtue.  But  one  is  a  lawyer,  and  the 
other  a  ploughman,  and  the  third  a  merchant ;  and  then,  acts  of 
goodness,  and  intervals  of  compassion  and  fine  feeling,  are  scat- 
tered up  and  down  the  common  occupations  of  life.  We  know 
women  are  to  be  compassionate  ;  but  they  cannot  be  compassionate 
from  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  till  twelve  at  night :  and  what 
are  they  to  do  in  the  interval  ?  This  is  the  only  question  we  have 
been  putting  all  along,  and  is  all  that  can  be  meant  by  literary 
education. 

Then,  again,  as  to  the  notoriety  which  is  incurred  by  literature. 
The  cultivation  of  knowledge  is  a  very  distinct  thing  from  its 
publication ;  nor  does  it  follow  that  a  woman  is  to  become  an 
author  merely  because  she  has  talent  enough  for  it.  We  do  not 
wish  a  lady  to  Avrite  books — to  defend  and  reply  —  to  squabble 
about  the  tomb  of  Achilles,  or  the  plain  of  Troy  —  any  more  than 
we  wish  her  to  dance  at  the  opera,  to  play  at  a  public  concert,  or 
to  put  pictures  in  the  exhibition,  because  she  has  learned  music, 
dancing,  and  drawing.  The  great  use  of  her  knowledge  will  be 
that  it  contributes  to  her  private  happiness.  She  may  make  it 
public :  but  it  is  not  the  principal  object  which  the  friends  of  female 
education  have  in  view.  Among  men,  the  few  who  write  bear  no 
comparison  to  the  many  who  read.  We  hear  most  of  the  formei-, 
indeed,  because  they  are,  in  general,  the  most  ostentations  part  of 
literary  men ;  but  there  are  innumerable  persons  who,  without 
ever  laying  themselves  before  the  public,  have  made  use  of  litera- 
ture '.o  add  to  the  strength  of  their  understandings,  and  to  improve 
the  happiness  of  their  lives.  After  all,  it  may  be  an  evil  for  ladies 
to  be  tallied  of:  but  we  really  think  those  ladies  who  are  talked 
of  Oiiiy  a,-5  Mrs.  Marcet,  Mrs.  Somerville,  and  Miss  Martineau,  are 


HAPPINESS   AT   STAKE.  145 

talked  of,  may  bear  their  misfortunes  with  a  very  great  degree  of 
Christian  patience. 

Their  exemption  from  all  the  necessary  business  of  life  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  motives  for  the  improvement  of  education  in 
women.  Lawyers  and  physicians  have  in  their  professions  a  con- 
stant motive  to  exertion  ;  if  you  neglect  their  education,  they  must, 
in  a  certain  degree,  educate  themselves  by  their  commerce  with 
the  world :  they  must  learn  caution,  accuracy,  and  judgment, 
because  they  must  incur  responsibility.  But  if  you  neglect  to 
educate  the  mind  of  a  woman,  by  the  speculative  difficulties  which 
occur  in  literature,  it  can  never  be  educated  at  all :  if  you  do  not 
effectually  rouse  it  by  education,  it  must  remain  for  ever  languid. 
Uneducated  men  may  escape  intellectual  degradation ;  uneducated 
women  cannot.  They  have  nothing  to  do ;  and  if  they  come  un- 
taught from  the  schools  of  education,  they  will  never  be  instructed 
in  the  school  of  events. 

Women  have  not  their  livelihood  to  gain  by  knowledge ;  and 
that  is  one  motive  for  relaxing  all  those  efforts  which  are  made  in 
the  education  of  men.  They  certainly  have  not ;  but  they  have 
happiness  to  gain,  to  which  knowledge  leads  as  probably  as  it  does 
to  profit ;  and  that  is  a  reason  against  mistaken  indulgence. 
Besides,  we  conceive  the  labour  and  fatigue  of  accomplishments 
to  be  quite  equal  to  the  labour  and  fatigue  of  knowledge ;  and 
that  it  takes  quite  as  many  years  to  be  charming  as  it  does  to  be 
learned. 

Another  difference  of  the  sexes  is,  that  women  are  attended  to, 
and  men  attend.  All  acts  of  courtesy  and  politeness  originate 
from  the  one  sex,  and  are  received  by  the  other.  We  can  see  no 
sort  of  reason,  in  this  diversity  of  condition,  for  giving  to  women 
a  trifling  and  insignificant  education ;  but  we  see  in  it  a  very  {)ow- 
erful  reason  for  strengthening  their  judgment,  and  inspiring  them 
with  the  habit  of  employing  time  usefully.  We  admit  many 
striking  differences  in  the  situation  of  the  two  sexes,  and  many 
v-viriking  differences  of  understanding,  procc\.ding  from  the  different 
circumstances  in  which  they  are  placed :  but  there  is  not  a  single 
difference  of  this  kind  which  does  not  afford  a  new  argument  fot 
making  the  education  of  women  better  than  it  is.  They  have 
nothing  serious  to  do  ;  is  that  a  reason  why  they  should  be  brought 

7 


146  SOLID   ATTAINMENTS. 

up  to  do  nothing  but  what  is  trifling  ?  They  an  exposed  to 
greater  dangers  ;  is  that  a  reason  why  their  faculties  are  to  be  pur- 
posely and  industriously  weakened  ?  They  are  to  form  the  char- 
acters of  future  men  ;  is  that  a  cause  Avhy  their  own  characters  are 
to  be  broken  and  frittered  down  as  they  now  are  ?  In  short,  there 
is  not  a  single  trait  in  that  diversity  of  circumstances,  in  which  the 
♦wo  sexes  are  placed,  that  does  not  decidedly  prove  the  magnitude 
of  the  error  we  commit  in  neglecting  (as  we  do  neglect)  the  edu- 
cation of  women. 

If  the  objections  against  the  better  education  of  women  could 
be  overruled,  one  of  the  great  advantages  that  would  ensue  would 
be  the  extinction  of  innumerable  follies.  A  decided  and  prevailing 
taste  for  one  or  another  mode  of  education  there  must  be.  A 
century  past,  it  was  for  housewifery — now  it  is  for  accomplish- 
ments. The  object  now  is,  to  make  women  artists — to  give  them 
an  excellence  in  drawing,  music,  painting,  and  dancing — of  which, 
persons  who  make  these  pursuits  the  occupation  of  their  lives,  and 
derive  from  them  their  subsistence,  need  not  be  ashamed.  Now, 
one  great  evil  of  all  this  is,  that  it  does  not  last.  If  the  whole  of  life 
were  an  Olympic  game  —  if  we  could  go  on  feasting  and  dancing 
to  the  end — this  might  do;  but  it  is  in  truth  merely  a  provision 
for  the  little  interval  between  coming  into  life,  and  settling  in  it ; 
while  it  leaves  a  long  and  dreary  expanse  behind,  devoid  both  of 
dignity  and  cheerfulness.  No  mother,  no  woman  who  has  passed 
over  the  few  first  years  of  life,  sings,  or  dances,  or  draws,  or  plays 
upon  musical  instruments.  These  are  merely  means  for  displaying 
the  grace  and  vivacity  of  youth,  which  every  woman  gives  up,  as 
she  gives  up  the  dress  and  manners  of  eighteen ;  she  has  no  wish 
to  retain  them  ;  or,  if  she  has,  she  is  driven  out  of  them  by  diame- 
ter and  derision.  The  system  of  female  education,  as  it  now 
stands,  aims  only  at  embellishing  a  few  years  of  life,  which  are  in 
themselves  so  full  of  grace  and  happiness,  that  they  hardly  want 
it ;  and  then  leaves  the  rest  of  existence  a  miserable  prey  to  idle 
insignificance.  No  woman  of  understanding  and  reflection  can 
possibly  conceive  she  is  doing  justice  to  her  children  by  such  kind 
of  education.  The  object  is,  to  give  to  children  resources  that 
will  endure  as  long  as  life  endures — habits  that  time  will  amelior- 
ate, not  destroy — occupations  that  will  render  sickness  tolerable, 
solitude  pleasant,  age  venerable,  hfe  more  lignified  and  useful,  and 


ACCOm'LISHMENTS.  147 

therefore  death  less  terrible :  and  the  compensation  which  is  offci'ed 
for  the  omission  of  all  this,  is  a  short-lived  blaze — a  little  tem- 
porary effect,  Avhich  has  no  other  consequence  than  to  deprive  the 
remainder  of  life  of  all  taste  and  relish.  There  may  be  Avomen 
who  have  a  taste  for  the  fine  arts,  and  who  evince  a  decided  talent 
for  drawing,  or  for  music.  In  that  case,  there  can  be  no  objection 
to  the  cultivation  of  these  arts ;  but  the  eiTor  is,  to  make  such 
things  the  grand  and  universal  object — to  insist  upon  it  that  every 
woman  is  to  sing,  and  draw,  and  dance  —  with  nature,  or  against 
nature — to  bind  her  apprentice  to  some  accomplishment,  and  if 
she  cannot  succeed  in  oil  or  water-colours,  to  prefer  gilding,  var- 
nishing, burnishing,  box-making,  to  real  solid  improvement  in  taste, 
knowledge,  and  understanding. 

A  great  deal  is  said  in  favour  of  the  social  nature  of  the  fine 
arts.  Music  gives  pleasure  to  others.  Drawing  is  an  art,  the 
amusement  of  which  does  not  centre  in  him  who  exercises  it,  but  it 
is  diffused  among  the  rest  of  the  world.  This  is  true  ;  but  tliere  is 
nothing,  after  all,  so  social  as  a  cultivated  mind.  "We  do  not  mean 
to  speak  slightingly  of  the  fine  arts,  or  to  depreciate  the  good  hu- 
mour with  which  they  are  sometimes  exhibited ;  but  we  appeal  to 
any  man,  whether  a  little  ;  pirited  and  sensible  conversation — 
displaying,  modestly,  useful  acquirements  —  and  evincing  rational 
curiosity,  is  not  well  worth  the  highest  exertions  of  musical  or 
graphical  skill.  A  woman  of  accomphshments  may  entertain  those 
who  have  the  pleasure  of  knowing  her  for  half  an  hour  with  great 
brilliancy ;  but  a  mind  full  of  ideas,  and  with  that  elastic  spring 
which  the  love  of  knowledge  only  can  convey,  is  a  perpetual 
source  of  exhilaration  and  amusement  to  all  that  come  within  its 
reach  ; — not  collecting  its  force  into  single  and  insulated  achieve- 
ments, like  the  efforts  made  in  the  fine  arts  —  but  diffiising,  equally 
over  the  whole  of  existence,  a  calm  pleasure  —  better  loved  as  it  is 
longer  felt  —  and  suitable  to  every  variety  and  every  period  of 
life.  Therefore,  instead  of  hanging  the  understanding  of  a  woman 
upon  walls,  or  hearing  it  vibrate  upon  strings  —  instead  of  seeing 
it  in  clouds,  or  hearing  it  in  the  wind,  we  would  make  it  the  first 
spring  and  ornament  of  society,  by  enriching  it  with  attainments 
upon  which  alone  such  power  depends. 

If  the  education  of  women  were  improved,  the  education  of 
men  would  be  improved  also.     Let  any  one  consider  (in  order  to 


148  FORMATION   OP   CHARACTER. 

bring  the  matter  more  home  by  an  individual  instance)  of  what  im- 
mense importance  to  society  it  is,  whether  a  nobleman  of  first-rate  for- 
tune and  distinction  is  well  or  ill  brought  up  ; — what  a  taste  and  fash- 
ion  he  may  inspire  for  private  and  for  pohtical  vice  !  —  and  what 
misery  and  mischief  he  may  produce  to  the  thousand  human  beings 
who  are  dependent  on  him !  A  country  contains  no  such  curse 
within  its  bosom.  Youth,  wealth,  high  rank,  and  vice,  form  a 
combination  which  baffles  all  remonstrance  and  beats  down  all 
opposition.  A  man  of  high  rank  who  combines  these  qualifica,- 
tions  for  corruption,  is  almost  the  master  of  the  manners  of  the 
age,  and  has  the  public  happiness  within  his  grasp.  But  the  most 
beautiful  possession  which  a  country  can  have  is  a  noble  and  rich 
man,  who  loves  virtue  and  knowledge  ; — who  without  being  feeble 
or  fanatical  is  pious — and  who  without  being  factious  is  firm  and 
independent; — who,  in  his  political  life,  is  an  equitable  mediator 
between  king  and  people ;  and  in  his  civil  life,  a  firm  promoter  of 
all  which  can  shed  a  lustre  upon  his  country,  or  promote  the  peace 
and  order  of  the  world.  But  if  these  objects  are  of  the  importance 
which  we  attribute  to  them,  the  education  of  women  must  be 
imjjortant,  as  the  formation  of  character  for  the  first  seven  or  eight 
yeai's  of  life  seems  to  depend  almost  entirely  upon  them.  It  is 
certainly  in  the  power  of  a  sensible  and  well-educated  mother  to 
inspire,  within  that  period,  such  tastes  and  propensities  as  shall 
nearly  decide  the  destiny  of  the  future  man ;  and  this  is  done,  not 
only  by  the  intentional  exertions  of  the  mother,  but  by  the  gradual 
and  insensible  imitation  of  the  child ;  for  there  is  something  ex- 
tremely contagious  in  greatness  and  rectitude  of  thinking,  even  at 
tliat  age  ;  and  the  character  of  the  mother  with  whom  he  passes  his 
early  infancy,  is  always  an  event  of  the  utmost  impoz'tance  to  the 
child.  A  merely  accomplished  woman  cannot  infuse  her  tastes 
into  the  minds  of  her  sons ;  and,  if  she  could,  nothing  could  be 
imore  unfortunate  than  her  success.  Besides,  when  her  accom- 
plishments are  given  up,  she  has  nothing  left  for  it  but  to  amuse 
Iherself  in  the  best  way  she  can ;  and,  becoming  entirely  frivolous, 
either  declines  altogether  the  fatigue  of  attending  to  her  children, 
.  or,  attending  to  them,  has  neither  talents  nor  knowledge  to  succeed; 
and,  therefore,  here  is  a  plain  and  fair  answer  to  those  who  ask 
po  triumphantly,  why  should  a  woman  dedicate  herself  to  this 
branch  of  knowledge?  or  why  should  she   be  attached    to  such 


EXERCISE   OF   THE   UNDERSTANDING.  149 

scienci!? — Because,  by  having  gained  information  on  these  points, 
she  may  inspire  her  son  with  vahiable  tastes,  which  may  abide  by 
him  through  Ufe,  and  carry  liim  up  to  all  the  subhmities  of  knowledge ; 
because  she  cannot  lay  the  foundation  of  a  great  character,  if  she 
is  absorbed  in  frivolous  amusements,  nor  inspire  her  child  Avith 
noble  desires,  when  a  long  course  of  trifling  has  destroyed  the  httle 
talents  which  were  left  by  a  bad  education. 

It  is  of  great  importance  to  a  country,  that  there  should  be 
as  many  understandings  as  possible  actively  employed  within  it. 
Mankind  are  much  happier  for  the  discovery  of  barometers,  ther- 
mometers, steam-engines,  and  all  the  innumerable  inventions  in  the 
arts  and  sciences.  We  are  every  day  and  every  hour  reaping  the 
benefit  of  such  talent  and  ingenuity.  The  same  observation  is 
true  of  such  works  as  those  of  Dryden,  Pope,  Milton,  and  Shake- 
speare. Mankind  are  much  happier  that  such  individuals  have 
lived  and  written ;  they  add  every  day  to  the  stock  of  public 
enjoyment — and  perpetually  gladden  and  embellish  life.  Now, 
the  number  of  those  who  exercise  their  understandings  to  any  good 
purpose,  is  exactly  in  proportion  to  those  who  exercise  it  at  all ; 
but,  as  the  matter  stands  at  present,  half  the  talent  in  the  universe 
runs  to  waste,  and  is  totally  unprofitable.  It  would  have  been 
almost  as  well  for  the  world,  hitherto,  that  women,  instead  of  pos- 
sessing the  capacities  they  do  at  present,  should  have  been  bom 
wholly  destitute  of  wit,  genius,  and  every  other  attribute  of  mind, 
of  which  men  make  so  eminent  a  use :  and  the  ideas  of  use  and 
possession  are  so  united  together,  that,  because  it  has  been  the 
custom  in  almost  all  countries  to  give  to  women  a  different  and 
a  worse  education  than  to  men,  the  notion  has  obtained  that  they 
do  not  possess  faculties  which  they  do  not  cultivate.  Just  as,  in 
breaking  up  a  common,  it  is  sometimes  very  difiicult  to  make  the 
poor  believe  it  will  carry  corn,  merely  because  they  have  been 
hitherto  accustomed  to  see  it  produce  nothing  but  weeds  and  grass 
— they  very  naturally  mistake  present  condition  for  general  na- 
ture. So  completely  have  the  talents  of  women  been  kept  down, 
that  there  is  scarcely  a  single  work,  either  of  reason  or  imagination, 
written  by,  a  woman,  which  is  in  general  circulation  either  in  the 
English,  French,  or  Italian  literature; — scarcely  one  that  has 
crept  even  into  the  ranKS  of  our  minor  poets. 

If  the  possession  of  excellent  talents  is  not  a  conclusive  reason 


150  PLEASURES   OF   CONVERSATION. 

why  they  should  be  improved,  it  at  least  amounts  to  a  very  strong 
presumption  ;  and,  if  it  can  be  shown  that  women  may  be  trained 
to  reason  and  imagine  as  well  as  men,  the  strongest  reasons  are 
certainly  necessary  to  show  us  why  we  should  not  avail  ourselves 
of  such  rich  gifts  of  nature  ;  and  we  have  a  right  to  call  for  a  clear 
statement  of  those  perils  which  make  it  necessary  that  such  talents 
should  be  totally  extinguished,  or,  at  most,  very  partially  drawn 
out.  The  burthen  of  proof  does  not  lie  with  those  who  say,  increase 
the  quantity  of  talent  in  any  country  as  much  as  possible — for 
such  a  proposition  is  in  conformity  with  every  man's  feehngs;  but 
it  lies  with  those  who  say,  take  care  to  keep  that  understanding 
weak  and  trifling,  which  nature  has  made  capable  of  becoming 
strong  and  powerful.  The  paradox  is  with  them,  not  with  us.  In 
all  human  reasoning,  knowledge  must  be  taken  for  a  good,  till  it 
can  be  shown  to  be  an  evil.  But  now,  nature  makes  to  us  rich 
and  magnificent  presents ;  and  we  say  to  her — You  are  too  luxu- 
riant and  munificent — we  must  keep  you  under,  and  prune  you  ; 
— we  have  talents  enough  in  the  other  half  of  the  creation  ;  —  and, 
if  you  will  not  stupify  and  enfeeble  the  minds  of  women  to  our  hands, 
we  ourselves  must  expose  them  to  a  narcotic  process,  and  educate 
away  that  fatal  redundance  with  which  the  world  is  afiiicted,  and 
the  order  of  sublunary  things  deranged. 

One  of  the  greatest  pleasures  of  Hfe  is  conversation;  —  and  the 
pleasures  of  conversation  are  of  course  enhanced  by  every  inci'ease 
of  knowledge :  not  that  we  should  meet  together  to  talk  of  alkalies 
and  angles,  or  to  add  to  our  stock  of  history  and  philology — 
though  a  little  of  these  things  is  no  bad  ingredient  in  conversation ; 
but  let  the  subject  be  what  it  may,  there  is  always  a  prodigious 
difference  between  the  conversation  of  those  who  have  been  Avell 
educated  and  of  those  who  have  not  enjoyed  this  advantage.  Edu- 
cation gives  fecundity  of  thought,  copiousness  of  illustration,  quick- 
ness, vigour,  fancy,  words,  images  and  illustrations  —  it  decorates 
every  common  thing,  and  gives  the  power  of  trifiing  without  being 
undignified  and  absurd.  The  subjects  themselves  may  not  be 
wanted,  upon  which  the  talents  of  an  educated  man  have  been  ex- 
ercised ;  but  there  is  always  a  demand  for  those  talents  which  his 
education  has  rendered  strong  and  quick.  Now,  really,  notliing 
can  be  further  from  our  intention  than  to  say  anything  rude  and 
unpleasant ;  bu :  we  must  be  excused  for  observing,  that  it  is  not 


PURSUIT   OF   KNOWLEDGE.  151 

now  a  very  common  thing  to  be  interested  by  the  variety  and  ex- 
tent of  female  knowledge,  but  it  is  a  very  common  thing  to  lament, 
that  the  finest  faculties  in  the  world  have  been  confined  to  trifles 
utterly  unworthy  of  their  richness  and  their  strength. 

The  pursuit  of  knowledge  is  the  most  innocent  and  interesting 
occupation  which  can  be  given  to  the  female  sex ;  nor  can  there 
be  a  better  method  of  checking  a  spirit  of  dissipation  than  by  dif- 
fusing a  taste  for  literature.  The  true  way  to  attack  vice,  is  by 
setting  up  something  else  against  it.  Give  to  women,  in  early 
youth,  sometliing  to  acquire,  of  sufficient  interest  and  importance 
to  command  the  application  of  their  mature  faculties,  and  to  excite 
their  perseverance  in  future  life;  —  teach  them  that  happiness  is 
to  be  derived  from  the  acquisition  of  knowledge,  as  well  as  the 
gratification  of  vanity  ;  and  you  will  raise  up  a  much  more  formid- 
able barrier  against  dissipation  than  a  host  of  invectives  and  ex- 
hortations can  supply. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  an  unfortunate  man  gets  drunk  with 
very  bad  wine  —  not  to  gratify  his  palate,  but  to  forget  his  cai'es : 
he  does  not  set  any  value  on  what  he  receives,  but  on  account  of 
what  it  excludes  —  it  keeps  out  something  worse  than  itself.  Now, 
though  it  were  denied  that  the  acquisition  of  serious  knowledge  is 
of  itself  important  to  a  woman,  still  it  prevents  a  taste  for  silly  and 
pernicious  works  of  imagination ;  it  keeps  away  the  horrid  trash 
of  novels ;  and,  in  lieu  of  that  eagerness  for  emotion  and  adven- 
ture which  books  of  that  sort  inspu'e,  promotes  a  calm  and  steady 
temperament  of  mind. 

A  man  who  deserves  such  a  piece  of  good  fortune,  may  general- 
ly find  an  excellent  companion  for  all  vicissitudes  of  his  life ;  but 
it  is  not  so  easy  to  find  a  companion  for  his  iniderstanding,  who 
has  similar  pui'suits  with  himself,  or  who  can  comjjrehend  the  pleas- 
ure he  derives  from  them.  "We  really  can  see  no  reason  why  it 
should  not  be  otherwise ;  nor  comprehend  how  the  pleasures  of 
domestic  life  can  be  promoted  by  diminishing  the  number  of  sub- 
jects in  which  persons  who  ai'e  to  spend  their  lives  together  take 
a  common  mterest. 

One  of  the  most  agreeable  consequences  of  knowledge  is  the 
respect  and  importance  which  it  communicates  to  old  age.  Men 
rise  in  character  often  as  they  increase  in  years ;  —  they  are  vene- 
rable from  what  they  have  acquired,  and  pleasing  from  what  tliev 


152  EESPECT  IN   AGE. 

can  impart-  If  they  outlive  their  faculties,  the  mere  frame  itselt 
is  respected  for  what  it  once  contained ;  but  women  (such  is  their 
unfortunate  style  of  education)  hazai-d  everything  upon  one  cast 
of  the  die  ;  —  when  youth  is  gone,  all  is  gone.  No  human  creature 
gives  his  admiration  for  nothing ;  either  the  eye  must  be  charmed, 
or  the  understanding  gratified.  A  woman  must  talk  wisely  or  look 
well.  Every  human  being  must  put  up  with  the  coldest  civility, 
who  has  neither  the  charms  of  youth  nor  the  wisdom  of  age. 
Neither  is  there  the  slightest  commiseration  for  decayed  accomphsh- 
raents  ; — no  man  mourns  over  the  fragments  of  a  dancer,  or  drops 
a  tear  on  the  relics  of  musical  skill.  They  are  flowers  destined  to 
perish ;  but  the  decay  of  great  talents  is  always  the  subject  of  solemn 
pity ;  and,  even  when  their  last  memorial  is  over,  their  ruins  and 
vestiges  are  regarded  with  pious  affection. 

There  is  no  connection  between  the  ignorance  in  wliich  women 
are  kept,  and  the  preservation  of  moral  and  religious  principle ; 
and  yet  certainly  there  is,  in  the  minds  of  some  timid  and  respec- 
table persons,  a  vague,  indefinite  dread  of  knowledge,  as  if  it  were 
capable  of  producing  these  effects.  It  might  almost  be  supposed, 
from  the  dread  which  the  propagation  of  knowledge  has  excited, 
that  there  was  some  great  secret  which  was  to  be  kept  in  impene- 
trable obscurity  —  that  all  moral  rules  were  a  species  of  delusion 
and  imposture,  the  detection  of  which,  by  the  improvement  of  the 
understanding,  would  be  attended  with  the  most  fatal  consequences 
to  all,  and  particularly  to  women.  If  we  could  possibly  under- 
stand what  these  great  secrets  were,  Ave  might  pei'haps  be  disposed 
to  concur  in  their  preservation ;  but  believing  that  all  the  salutary 
rules  which  are  imposed  on  women  are  the  result  of  true  wisdom, 
and  productive  of  the  greatest  happiness,  we  can  not  understand 
how  they  are  to  become  less  sensible  of  this  truth  in  proportion  as 
their  power  of  discovering  truth  in  general  is  increased,  and  the 
habit  of  viewing  questions  with  accuracy  and  comprehension  es- 
tablished by  education.  There  are  men,  indeed,  who  are  always 
exclaiming  against  every  species  of  power,  because  it  is  connected 
with  danger :  their  dread  of  abuses  is  so  much  stronger  than  their 
admiration  of  uses,  that  they  would  cheerfully  give  up  the  use  of 
fire,  gunpowder,  and  printing,  to  be  freed  from  robbers,  incendia- 
ries, and  libels.  It  is  true,  that  every  increase  of  knowledge  may 
possibly  render  depravity  more  depraved,  as  well  as  it  may  in- 


SUMMING   UP.  15o 

crease  the  strength  of  virtue.  It  is  in  itself  only  power ;  and  its 
value  depends  on  its  application.  But,  trust  to  the  natural  love  of 
good  where  there  is  no  temptation  to  be  bad  —  it  operates  nowhere 
more  forcibly  than  in  education.  No  man,  whether  he  be  tutor, 
guardian,  or  friend,  ever  contents  himself  with  infusing  the  mere 
ability  to  acquire ;  but  giving  tlie  power,  he  gives  with  it  a  taste 
for  the  wise  and  rational  exercise  of  that  power ;  so  that  an  edu- 
cated person  is  not  only  one  w  kh  stronger  and  better  faculties  than 
others,  but  with  a  more  useful  propensity — a  disposition  better 
cultivated — and  associations  of  a  higher  and  more  important 
class. 

In  short,  and  to  recapitulate  the  main  points  upon  which  we 
have  insisted :  Why  the  disproportion  in  knowledge  between  the 
two  sexes  should  be  so  great,  when  the  inequality  in  natural  talents 
is  so  small ;  or  why  the  understanding  of  women  should  be  lavish- 
ed upon  trifles,  when  nature  has  made  it  capable  of  better  and 
higher  things,  we  profess  ourselves  not  able  to  understand.  The 
affectation  charged  upon  female  knowledge  is  best  cured  by  making 
that  knowledge  more  general :  and  the  economy  devolved  upon 
women  is  best  secured  by  the  ruin,  disgrace,  and  inconvenience 
which  proceed  from  neglecting  it.  For  the  care  of  children, 
nature  has  made  a  direct  and  powerful  provision ;  and  the  gentle- 
ness and  elegance  of  women  is  the  natural  consequence  of  that  de- 
sire to  please,  which  is  productive  of  the  greatest  part  of  civiliza- 
tion and  refinement,  and  Avhich  rests  upon  a  foundation  too  deep  to 
be  shaken  by  any  such  modifications  in  education  as  we  have  pro- 
posed. If  you  educate  women  to  attend  to  dignified  and  important 
subjects,  you  are  multiplying  beyond  measure  the  chances  of 
human  improvement,  by  preparing  and  medicating  those  early  im- 
pressions, which  always  come  from  the  mother ;  and  which,  in  a 
great  majority  of  instances,  are  quite  decisive  of  character  and 
genius.  Nor  is  it  only  in  the  business  of  education  that  women 
would  influence  the  destiny  of  men.  If  women  knew  more,  men 
must  learn  more — for  ignoi-ance  would  then  be  shameful— and  it 
would  become  the  fashion  to  be  instructed.  The  instruction  of 
women  improves  the  stock  of  national  talents,  and  employs  more 
minds  Tor  the  instruction  and  amusement  of  the  Avorld ; — it  in- 
creases the  pleasures  of  society,  by  multiplying  the  topics  upon ' 
which  the  two  sexes  take  a  common  interest ;  and  makes  mai'riage 

7* 


154  SCHOOL  TYRANNY. 

an  intercourse  of  understanding  as  well  as  of  affection,  by  giving 
dignity  and  importance  to  the  female  character.  The  education  of 
women  favours  public  morals ;  it  provides  for  every  season  of  life, 
as  well  as  for  the  brightest  and  the  best ;  and  leaves  a  woman, 
when  she  is  stricken  by  the  hand  of  time,  not  as  she  now  is,  desti- 
tute of  everything,  and  neglected  by  all ;  but  with  the  full  power 
and  the  splendid  attractions  of  knowledge  —  diffushig  the  elegant 
pleasures  of  polite  hterature,  and  receiving  the  just  homage  of 
learned  and  accomplished  men. 


BOYISH    HARDSHIPS    AT    SCHOOL.* 

We  are  convinced  that  those  young  people  will  turn  out  to  be 
the  best  men,  who  have  been  guarded  most  effectually  in  their 
childhood,  from  every  species  of  useless  vexation  ;  and  experienced, 
in  the  greatest  degree,  the  blessings  of  a  wise  and  rational  indul- 
gence. But  even  if  these  effects  upon  future  character  are  not 
produced,  still,  four  or  five  years  in  childhood  make  a  very  con- 
siderable period  of  human  existence ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  a 
trifling  consideration  whether  they  are  passed  happily  or  unhap- 
pily. The  wretchedness  of  school  tyranny  is  trifling  enough  to  a 
man  who  only  contemplates  it  in  ease  of  body  and  tranquillity  of 
mind,  through  the  medium  of  twenty  intervening  yeai's ;  but  it  is 
quite  as  real,  and  quite  as  acute  wliile  it  lasts,  as  any  of  the  suf- 
ferings of  mature  life :  and  the  utility  of  these  sufferings,  or  the 
price  paid  in  compensation  for  them,  should  be  clearly  made  out 
to  a  conscientious  parent  before  he  consents  to  expose  his  children 
to  them. 


MADAME    d'ePINAY. HER    FRIENDSHIP    WITH    ROUSSEAU.f 

There  used  to  be  in  Paris,  under  the  ancient  regime,  a  few 
women  of  brilliant  talents,  who  violated  all  the  common  duties  of 
life,  and  gave  very  pleasant  little  suppers.  Among  these  supped 
and  sinned  Madame  d'Epinay  —  the  friend  and  companion  of 
Rousseau,  Diderot,  Grimm,  Holbach,  and  many  other  literary  per- 

*  From  an  article  on  Public  Schools.     Ed.  Rev.,  August,  1810. 
t  Memoires  et  Correspondence  de  Madame  d'Epinay.     3  vols.  8vo.     Ed. 
Review,  Dec,  1818. 


MADAME  d'ePINAY.  166 

fions  of  distinction  of  that  period.  Her  principal  lover  was  Grimm ; 
with  Avhom  was  deposited,  written  in  feigned  names,  the  history  of 
her  life.  Grimm  died  —  his  secretary  sold  the  history — the  feigned 
names  have  been  exchanged  for  the  real  ones  —  and  her  works 
now  appear  abridged  in  tliree  volumes  octavo. 

Madame  d'Epinay,  though  far  from  an  immaculate  character, 
has  something  to  say  in  palliation  of  her  irregularities.  Her  hus- 
band behaved  abominably ;  and  alienated,  by  a  series  of  the  most 
brutal  injuries,  an  attachment  which  seems  to  have  been  very  ar- 
dent and  sincei-e,  and  which,  with  better  treatment,  would  probably 
have  been  lasting.  For,  in  all  her  aberrations,  Mad.  d'Epinay 
seems  to  have  had  a  tendency  to  be  constant.  Though  extremely 
young  when  separated  from  her  husband,  she  indulged  herself  wath 
but  two  lovers  for  the  rest  of  her  life; — to  the  first  of  whom  she 
seems  to  have  been  perfectly  faithful,  till  he  left  her  at  the  end  of 
ten  or  twelve  years  ;  —  and  to  Grimm,  by  whom  he  was  succeeded, 
she  appears  to  have  given  no  rival  till  the  day  of  her  death.  The 
account  of  the  life  she  led,  both  with  her  husband  and  her  lovers, 
brings  upon  the  scene  a  great  variety  of  French  chax-acters,  and 
lays  open  very  completely  the  interior  of  French  life  and  manners. 
But  there  are  some  letters  and  passages  which  ought  not  to  have 
been  published ;  which  a  sense  of  common  decency  and  morality 
ought  to  have  suppressed ;  and  which,  we  feel  assured,  would  never 
have  seen  the  light  in  this  country. 

A  French  W'Onian  seems  almost  always  to  have  wanted  the  fla- 
vour of  prohibition,  as  a  necessary  condiment  to  human  life.  The 
provided  husband  was  rejected,  and  the  forbidden  husband  intro- 
duced in  ambiguous  light,  through  posterns  and  secret  partitions. 
It  was  not  the  union  to  one  man  that  was  objected  to  —  for  they 
dedicated  themselves  with  a  constancy  which  the  most  household 
and  parturient  woman  in  England  could  not  exceed; — but  the 
thing  wanted  was  the  wrong  man,  the  gentleman  without  the  ring 
—  the  master  unsworn  to  at  the  altar — the  person  unconsecrated 
by  priests — 

"  Oh !  let  me  taste  thee  unexcised  by  kings." 
♦  *****« 

The  friendship  of  Madame  d'Epinay  with  Rousseau  proceeded 
to  a  great  degree  of  intimacy.  She  admired  his  genius,  and  provided 
him  with  hats  and  coats  ;  and,  at  last,  was  so  far  deluded  by  hiu  de- 


156  LOCAL   MORALS. 

clamations  about  the  country,  as  to  fit  him  up  a  Httle  hermit  cot- 
tage, where  there  were  a  great  many  birds,  and  a  great  many 
plants  and  flowers  —  and  where  Rousseau  was,  as  miglit  have  beeji 
expected,  supremely  miserable.  His  friends  from  Paris  did  not 
come  to  see  him.  The  postman,  the  butcher,  and  the  baker,  hate 
romantic  scenery ;  duchesses  and  marchionesses  were  no  longer 
found  to  scramble  for  him.  Among  the  real  inhabitants  of  the 
country,  the  reputation  of  reading  and  thinking  is  fatal  to  charac- 
ter ;  and  Jean  Jacques  cursed  his  own  successful  eloquence  which 
had  sent  him  from  the  suppers  and  flattery  of  Paris,  to  smell 
daifodils,  watch  sparrows,  or  project  idle  saliva  into  the  passing 
stream.  Very  few  men  who  have  gratified,  and  are  gratifying 
their  vanity  in  a  great  metropolis,  are  qualified  to  quit  it.  Few 
have  the  plain  sense  to  perceive  that  they  must  soon  inevitably  be 
forgotten — or  the  fortitude  to  bear  it  when  they  are.  They  repre- 
sent to  themselves  imaginary  scenes  of  deploring  friends  and  dis- 
pirited companies  —  but  the  ocean  might  as  well  I'egret  the  drops 
exhaled  by  the  sunbeams.  Life  goes  on  ;  and  whether  the  absent 
have  retired  into  a  cottage  or  a  grave,  is  much  the  same  thing. — 
In  London,  as  in  law,  de  non  apparentihus,  et  non  existentibus 
eadem  est  ratio. 


LOCAL    ENGLISH    MORALS.* 

This  is  very  well,  considering  that  seventy  years  ago,  we  had 
scarcely  a  foot  of  land  in  India.  But  English  morals  are  quite 
local.  Under  the  meridian  of  Greenwich,  and  between  the  50th 
and  o8th  degrees  of  latitude,  we  are  an  upright,  humane,  and  just 
people.  Between  the  Gth  and  10th  degrees  of  western  longitude, 
we  are  tyrants  and  oppressors.  On  the  other  side  of  the  Cape,  we 
are  ambitious  and  unprincipled  conquerors: — just  as  the  same 
animal  is  woolly  in  one  country,  hairy  in  another,  and  something 
between  both  in  a  third. 


A    HINT    TO    TRAVELLERS.f 

A  TRAVELLER  wlio  passes  through  countries  little  known,  should 
tell  us  how  such  countries  are  cultivated  —  how  they  are  governed 

*  From  a  review  of  St.  Heude's  Voyage  up  the  Persian  Gulf.     Ed.  Ro 
view,  July,  1819. 
t  Prom  the  same. 


CONQUERORS.  167 

—  what  is  thj  face  of  nature — wliat  is  the  stale  of  the  useful  arts 

—  what  is  the  degree  of  knowledge  which  exists  there.  Every 
reader  will  be  glad  to  learn  these  things,  or  some  of  them :  but 
few,  we  imagine,  will  car?  to  know  whether  he  had  a  lean  horse  at 
this  stage,  or  a  fat  horse  at  another — whether  his  supper  at  any 
given  village  was  milk  without  eggs,  or  eggs  without  milk.  A 
little  gossip  and  a  few  adventures,  are  very  well ;  but  a  book  of 
gossip  and  adventures,  especiidly  when  related  without  wit  or  dis- 
cretion, had  better  not  be. 


USE    OF    CONQUERORS.* 

Nothing  in  this  world  is  created  in  vain :  lions,  tigei's,  conquer- 
ors, have  their  use.  Ambitious  monarchs,  who  are  the  curse  of 
civilized  nations,  are  the  civilizers  of  savage  people.  With  a  num- 
ber of  little  independent  hordes,  civilization  is  impossible.  They 
must  have  a  common  interest  before  there  can  be  peace ;  and  be 
directed  by  one  will,  before  there  can  be  order.  When  mankind 
are  prevented  from  daily  quarrelling  and  fighting,  they  first  begin 
to  improve  ;  and  all  this,  we  are  afraid,  is  only  to  be  accomplished, 
in  the  first  instance,  by  some  great  conqueror.  We  sympatliize, 
therefore,  with  the  victories  of  the  King  of  Ashantee — and  feel 
ourselves,  for  the  first  time,  in  love  with  military  glory.  The  ex- 
Emperor  of  the  French  would,  at  Coomassie,  Dogwumba,  or  Inta, 
be  an  eminent  benefactor  to  the  human  race. 


NATURE  AT  BOTANY  BAY.f 

Botany  Bay  is  situated  in  a  fine  climate,  rather  Asiatic  than 
European  —  with  a  great  variety  of  temperature  —  but  favourable, 
on  the  whole,  to  health  and  life.  It,  conjointly  with  Van  Diemen's 
Land,  produces  coal  in  great  abundance,  fossil  salt,  slate,  lime, 
plumbago,  potter's  clay  ;  iron  ;  white,  yellow  and  brilliant  topazes ; 
alum  and  copper.  These  are  all  the  important  fossil  productions 
which  have  been  hitherto  discovered ;  but  the  epidermis  of  the 
country  lias  hardly  as  yet  been  scratched ;  and  it  is  most  probable 

*  rrom  a  review  of  Mission  from  Cape  Coast  Castle  to  Ashantee.  By  T. 
Edward  Bowdich.     Ed.  Rev.,  Oct.,  1819. 

t  Alt.  "Bota-y  Bay."     Ed.  Rev.,  July,  1819. 


158  BOTANY  BAY. 

that  the  immense  mountains  which  divide  the  eastern  and  western 
settlements,  Bathurst  and  Sydney,  must  abound  with  every  species 
of  mineral  wealth.  The  harbours  are  admirable  ;  and  the  whole 
world,  perhaps,  cannot  produce  two  such  as  those  of  Port  Jackson 
and  Derwent.  The  foi'mer  of  these  is  land-locked  for  fourteen 
miles  in  length,  and  of  the  most  irregular  form ;  its  soundings 
are  more  than  sufficient  for  the  largest  ships ;  and  all  the  navies 
of  the  world  might  ride  in  safety  within  it.  In  the  harbour  of 
Derwent  there  is  a  road-stead  forty-eight  miles  in  length,  com- 
pletely land-locked;  —  varying  in  breadth  from  eight  to  two  miles 
— in  depth  from  thirty  to  four  fathoms — and  affording  the  best 
anchorage  the  whole  way. 

The  mean  heat,  during  the  tliree  summer  months,  December, 
January,  and  February,  is  about  80°  at  noon.  The  heat  which 
such  a  degree  of  the  thermometer  would  seem  to  indicate,  is  con- 
siderably tempered  by  the  sea-breeze,  which  blows  with  consider- 
able force  from  nine  in  the  morning  till  seven  in  the  evening.  The 
three  autumn  months  are  March,  April,  and  May,  in  which  the 
thermometer  varies  from  55°  at  night  to  75°  at  noon.  The  three 
winter  months  are  June,  July,  and  August.  During  this  interval, 
the  mornings  and  evenings  are  very  chilly,  and  the  nights  exces- 
si\ely  cold ;  hoar-frosts  are  frequent ;  ice,  half  an  inch  thick,  is 
found  twenty  miles  from  the  coast ;  the  mean  temperature  at  day- 
light is  from  40°  to  45^,  and  at  noon,  from  55"^  to  60°.  In  the 
three  months  of  spring,  the  thermometer  varies  from  60°  to  70°. 
The  climate  to  the  westward  of  the  mountains  is  colder.  Heavy 
falls  of  snow  take  place  during  the  winter ;  the  frosts  are  more  se- 
vere, and  the  winters  of  longer  duration.  All  the  seasons  are 
much  more  distinctly  marked,  sind  resemble  much  more  those  of 
this  country. 

Such  is  the  climate  of  Botany  Bay ;  and,  in  this  remote  part 
of  the  earth.  Nature  (having  made  horses,  oxen,  ducks,  geese,  oaks, 
elms,  and  all  regular  and  useful  productions  for  the  rest  of  the 
world),  seems  determined  to  have  a  bit  of  play,  and  to  amuse  her- 
self as  she  pleases.  Accordingly,  she  makes  cherries  with  the 
stone  on  the  outside ;  and  a  monstrous  animal,  as  tall  as  a  grena- 
dier, with  the  head  of  a  rabbit,  a  tail  as  big  as  a  bed-post,  hopping 
along  at  the  rate  of  five  hops  to  a  mile,  with  three  or  four  young 
kangaroos  looking  out  of  its  false  uterus  to  s^ee  what  is  passing. 


CLIMBING   BOYS.  159 

Then  comes  a  quadruped  as  big  as  a  large  cat,  with  the  eyes,  col- 
our and  skin  of  a  mole,  and  the  bill  and  web-feet  of  a  duck  —  puz- 
zling Dr.  Shaw,  and  rendering  the  latter  half  of  his  life  miserable, 
from  his  utter  inability  to  determine  whether  it  was  a  bird  or  a 
beast.  Add  to  this  a  pai-rot,  with  the  legs  of  a  sea-gull ;  a  skate 
with  the  head  of  a  shark ;  and  a  bird  of  such  monstrous  dimen- 
sions, that  a  side  bone  of  it  will  dine  Uiree  real  carnivorous  En- 
glishmen;—  together  with  many  other  productions  that  agitate  Sir 
Joseph,  and  fill  him  with  mingled  emotions  of  distress  and  delight. 


CHIMNEY  -  SWEEPERS.* 

An  excellent  and  well-arranged  dinner  is  a  most  pleasing  oc- 
currence, and  a  great  trium^jh  of  civilized  life.  It  is  not  only  the 
descending  morsel  and  the  enveloping  sauce — but  the  rank,  wealth, 
wit  and  beauty,  which  surround  the  meats  —  the  learned  manage- 
ment of  light  and  heat — the  silent  and  rapid  services  of  the  at- 
tendants—  the  smiling  and  sedulous  host,  proffering  gusts  and 
relishes — the  exotic  bottles — the  embossed  plate — the  pleasant 
remarks  —  the  handsome  dresses  —  the. cunning  artifices  in  fruit 
and  farina  !  The  hour  of  dinner,  in  short,  includes  everything  of 
sensual  and  intellectual  gratification  which  a  great  nation  glories  in 
producing. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this,  who  knows  that  the  kitchen  chimney 
caught  fire  half  an  hour  before  dinner!  —  and  that  a  poor  little 
wretch,  of  six  or  seven  years  oid,  was  sent  up  in  the  midst  of  the 
flames  to  put  it  out  ?  We  could  not,  previous  to  reading  this  evi- 
dence, have  formed  a  conception  of  the  miseries  of  these  poor 
wretches,  or  that  there  should  exist,  in  a  civilized  country,  a  class  of 
human  beings  destined  to  such  extreme  and  varied  distress 

We  have  been  thus  particular  in  stating  the  case  of  the  chim- 
ney-sweepers, and  in  founding  it  upon  the  basis  of  facts,  that  we 
may  make  an  answer  to  those  profligate  persons  who  are  always 
ready  to  fling  an  air  of  ridicule  upon  the  labours  of  humanity, 
because  they  are  desirous  that  what  they  have  not  virtue  to  do 
themselves,  should  appear  to  be  foolish  and  romantic  when  done 
by  others.'  A  still  higher  degree  of  depravity  than  this,  is  to  want 
every  «ort  of  compassion  for  human  misery,  when  it  is  accompanied 
*  Ed.  Rev.,  Oct.,  181<3. 


160  CASTLEREAGH. 

by  filth,  poverty  and  ignorance  —  to  regulate  humanity  by  the;  in- 
come tax,  and  to  deem  the  bodily  wretchedness  and  the  dirty  tears 
of  the  poor  a  fit  subject  for  pleasantry  and  contempt.  "We  should 
have  been  loath  to  believe  that  such  deep-seated  and  disgusting 
immorality  existed  in  these  days ;  but  the  notice  of  it  is  forced 
upon  us.  Nor  must  we  pass  over  a  set  of  marvellously  weak  gen- 
tlemen who  discover  democracy  and  revolution  in  every  effort  to 
improve  the  condition  of  the  lower  orders,  and  to  take  off  a  little 
of  the  load  of  misery  from  those  points  where  it  presses  the  hard- 
est. Such  are  the  men  into  whose  hearts  Mrs.  Fry  has  sti-uck  the 
deepest  terror — who  abhor  Mr.  Bentham  and  his  penitentiary ; 
Mr.  Bennet  and  his  hulks ;  Sir  James  Mackintosh  and  his  bloodless 
assizes;  IMr.  Tuke  and  his  sweeping  machines  —  and  every  other 
human  being  who  is  great  and  good  enough  to  sacrifice  his  quiet 
to  his  love  for  his  fellow-creatures.  Certainly  we  admit  that  hu- 
manity is  sometimes  the  veil  of  ambition  or  of  faction ;  but  w^e 
have  no  doubt  that  there  are  a  great  many  excellent  persons  to 
whom  it  is  misery  to  see  misery,  and  pleasure  to  lessen  it ;  and  who, 
by  calling  the  public  attention  to  the  worst  cases,  and  by  giving 
birth  to  judicious  legislative  enactments  for  their  improvement, 
have  made,  and  are  making  the  world  somewhat  happier  than  they 
found  it.  Upon  these  principles  we  join  hands  with  the  friends  of 
the  chimney-sweepers,  and  most  heartily  wish  for  the  diminution 
of  their  numbers  and  the  limitation  of  their  trade. 


CASTLEREAGH,    CANNING,    AND    GRATTAN.* 

There  are  two  eminent  Irishmen  now  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, Lord  Castlereagh  and  Ivlr.  Canning,  who  will  subscribe  to 
the  justness  of  every  syllable  we  have  said  upon  this  subject ;  and 
who  have  it  in  their  power,  by  making  it  the  condition  of  their 
remaining  in  office,  to  liberate  their  native  country  and  raise  it  to 
its  just  ranic  among  the  nations  of  the  earth.  Yet  the  court  buys 
them  over,  year  after  year,  by  the  pomp  and  perquisites  of  office, 
and  year  after  year  they  come  into  the  House  of  Commons,  feeling 
deeply  and  describing  powerfully,  the  injuries  of  five  millions  of 
their  countrymen  —  and  continue  members  of  a  government  that 
inflicts  those  evils,  under  the  pitiful  delusion  that  it  is  not  a  cabinet 
question — as  if  the  scratchings  and  quarrellings  of  kings  and 
*  The  conclusion  of  an  Article  on  Ireland.     Ed.  Rev.,  Nov.,  1820, 


GRATTAN.  161 

queens  could  alone  cement  politicians  together  in  indissoluble  unity, 
while  the  fate  and  fortune  of  one  third  of  the  empire  might  be 
complimented  away  from  one  minister  to  another,  without  the 
smallest  breach  in  their  cabinet  alliance.  Politicians,  at  least 
honest  politicians,  should  be  very  flexible  and  accommodating  in 
little  things,  very  rigid  and  inflexible  in  great  things.  And  is  this 
not  a  gi'cat  thing?  Who  has  painted  it  in  finer  and  more  com- 
manding eloquence  than  Mr.  Canning?  Who  has  taken  a  more 
sensible  and  statesmanlike  view  of  our  miserable  and  cruel  policy 
than  Lord  Castlereagh  ?  You  would  think,  to  hear  them,  that  the 
same  planet  could  not  contain  them  and  the  oppressors  of  their 
country — perhaps  not  the  same  solar  system.  Yet  for  money, 
claret  and  patronage,  they  lend  their  countenance,  assistance,  and 
friendship,  to  the  ministers  who  are  the  stern  and  inflexible  ene- 
mies to  the  emancipation  of  Ireland  ! 

Thank  God  that  all  is  not  profligacy  and  corruption  in  the  his- 
tory of  that  devoted  people  —  and  that  the  name  of  Irishman  does 
not  always  carry  with  it  the  idea  of  the  oppressor  or  the  oppressed 
— the  plunderer  or  the  plundered — the  tyrant  or  the  slave.  Great 
men  hallow  a  whole  people  and  lift  up  all  who  live  in  their  time. 
What  Irishman  does  not  feel  proud  that  he  has  lived  in  the  days 
of  Grattan  ?  who  has  not  turned  to  him  for  comfort,  from  the  false 
friends  and  open  enemies  of  Ireland  ?  who  did  not  remember  him 
in  the  days  of  its  burnings,  and  "wastings,  and  murders  ?  No 
government  ever  dismayed  him  —  the  world  could  not  bribe  him 
— he  thought  only  of  Ireland — lived  for  no  other  object — dedi- 
cated to  her  his  beautiful  fancy,  his  elegant  wit,  his  manly  courage 
and  all  the  splendour  of  his  astonishing  eloquence.  He  was  so 
born  and  so  gifted,  that  poetry,  forensic  skill,  elegant  literature 
and  all  the  highest  attainments  of  human  genius,  were  within  his 
reach ;  but  he  thought  the  noblest  occupation  of  a  man  was  to 
make  other  men  happy  and  free  ;  and  in  that  straiglit  line  he  went 
on  for  fifty  years,  without  one  side-look,  Avithout  one  yielding 
thought,  w^ithout  one  motive  in  his  henrt  which  he  might  not  have 
laid  open  to  the  view  of  God  and  man.  He  is  gone  ! — but  there 
is  not  a  single  day  of  his  honest  life  of  which  every  good  Irishman 
would  not  be  more  proud,  than  of  the  whole  political  existence  of 
his  countrymen  —  the  arnual  deserters  and  betrayers  of  their 
native  land. 


162  ANCESTOES   AND   CONTEMPORARIES. 

JOHN  bull's  charity  subscriptions.* 

The  English  are  a  calm,  reflecting  people ;  they  will  give  time 
and  money  when  they  are  convinced ;  but  they  love  dates,  names, 
and  certificates.  In  the  midst  of  the  most  heart-rending  narratives, 
Bull  requires  the  day  of  the  month,  the  year  of  our  Lord,  the 
name  of  the  parish  and  the  countersign  of  three  or  four  respecta- 
ble householders.  After  these  affecting  circumstances,  he  can  no 
longer  hold  out;  but  gives  way  to  the  kindness  of  his  nature  — 
puffs,  blubbers,  and  subscribes. 


WISDOM    OF    OUR   ANCESTORS.f 

Our  Wise  Ancestors — the  Wisdom  of  our  Ancestors  —  the  Wis- 
dom of  Ages — Venerable  Antiquity — Wisdom  of  Old  Times. — 
This  mischievous  and  absurd  fallacy  springs  from  the  gi'ossest 
perversion  of  the  meaning  of  words.  Experience  is  certainly  the 
mother  of  wisdom,  and  the  old  have,  of  course,  a  greater  experi- 
ence than  the  young ;  but  the  question  is,  who  are  the  old  ?  and 
who  are  the  young?  Of  individuals  living  at  the  same  period, 
the  oldest  has,  of  course,  the  greatest  experience ;  but  among 
generations  of  men  the  reverse  of  this  is  true.  Those  who  come 
first  (our  ancestors),  are  the  young  people,  and  have  the  least 
experience.  We  have  added  to  their  experience  the  experience 
of  many  centuries ;  and,  therefore,  as  far  as  experience  goes,  are 
wiser,  and  more  capable  of  forming  an  opinion  than  they  were. 
The  real  feeling  should  be,  not  can  we  be  so  presumptuous  as  to 
put  our  opinions  in  oj^position  to  those  of  our  ancestors  ?  but  can 
such  young,  ignorant,  inexperienced  persons  as  our  ancestors  neces- 
sarily were,  be  expected  to  have  understood  a  subject  as  well  us 
those  who  have  seen  so  much  more,  lived  so  much  longer,  and 
enjoyed  the  ex^serience  of  so  many  centuries  ?  AU  this  cant,  then, 
about  our  ancestors  is  merely  an  abuse  of  words,  by  transferring 
phrases  true  of  contemporary  men  to  succeeding  ages.  Whereas 
(as  we  have  before  observed)  of  living  men  the  oldest  has,  cceteris 
paribus,  the   most   experience ;    of  generations,  the   oldest   has, 

*  Prisons.     Ed.  Rev.,  Feb.,  1822. 

t  From  a  Review  of  The  Book  of  Fallacies  :  from  Unfinished  Papers  of 
Jeremy  Bcntliam.     By  a  Friend.     Ed.  Rev.,  Aug.,  1825. 


THE   GOOD  OLD   TIMES  163 

ccBteris  paribus,  the  least  experience.  Oui*  ancestors,  up  to  the 
Conquest,  were  children  in  arms ;  chubby  boys  in  the  time  of 
Edward  the  First ;  striplings  under  Elizabeth  ;  men  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Anne ;  and  ive  only  are  the  white-bearded,  silver-headed 
ancients,  who  have  treasured  up,  and  are  prepared  to  profit  by,  ail 
the  experience  which  human  life  can  supply.  We  are  not  disputing 
with  our  ancestors  the  palm  of  talent,  in  which  they  may  or  may 
not  be  our  superiors,  but  the  palm  of  experience,  in  which  it  is 
utterly  impossible  they  can  be  our  superiors.  And  yet,  whenever 
the  chancellor  comes  forward  to  protect  some  abuse,  or  to  oppose 
some  plan  which  has  the  increase  of  human  happiness  for  its 
object,  his  first  aj)pcal  is  always  to  the  wisdom  of  our  ancestors ; 
and  he  himself,  and  many  noble  lords  who  vote  with  him,  are,  to 
this  hour,  persuaded  that  all  alterations  and  amendments  on  their 
devices  are  an  unblushing  controversy  between  youthful  temerity 
and  mature  experience! — and  so,  in  truth,  they  are — only  that 
much-loved  magistrate  mistakes  the  young  for  the  old  and  the  old 
for  the  young  —  and  is  guilty  of  that  very  sin  against  experience 
which  he  attributes  to  the  lovers  of  innovation. 

We  cannot,  of  course,  be  supposed  to  maintain  that  our  ances- 
tors wanted  wisdom,  or  that  they  were  necessarily  mistaken  in 
their  institutions,  because  their  means  of  information  were  more 
limited  than  ours.  But  we  do  confidently  maintain,  that  when  we 
find  it  expedient  to  change  anything  which  our  ancestors  have 
enacted,  we  are  the  experienced  persons,  and  not  they.  The 
quantity  of  talent  is  always  varying  in  any  great  nation.  To  say 
that  we  are  more  or  less  able  than  our  ancestors,  is  an  assertion 
that  requires  to  be  explained.  All  the  able  men  of  all  ages,  who 
have  ever  lived  in  England,  probably  possessed,  if  taken  alto- 
gether, more  intellect  than  all  the  able  men  now  in  England  can 
boast  of.  But  if  authority  must  be  resorted  to  rather  than  reason, 
the  question  is,  What  was  the  wisdom  of  that  single  age  which 
enacted  the  law,  compared  with  the  wisdom  of  the  age  which 
proposes  to  alter  it  ?  What  are  the  eminent  men  of  one  and  the 
other  period  ?  If  you  say  that  our  ancestors  Avere  wiser  than  us, 
mention  your  date  and  year.  If  the  splendour  of  names  is  equal, 
ai'e  the  circumstances  the  same?  If  the  circumstances  are  the 
same,  we  have  a  superiority  of  experience,  of  which  the  difference 
between  the  two  periods  is  the  measure.     It  is  necessary  to  insisl 


164  noodle's  oration. 

upon  tills ;  for  upon  sacks  of  wool,  and  on  benches  forensic,  sit 
grave  men,  and  agricolous  persons  in  the  Commons,  crying  out, 
"  Ancestors,  Ancestors  !  hodie  non !  Saxons,  Danes,  save  us  ! 
Fiddlefrig,  help  us !  Howel,  Ethelwolf,  protect  us."  Any  cover 
for  nonsense  —  any  veil  for  trash — any  pretext  for  repelling  the 
innovations  of  conscience  and  of  duty ! 


noodle's  oration.* 

The  whole  of  these  fallacies  may  be  gathered  together  in  a 
little  oration,  which  we  will  denominate  the  Noodle's  Oration. 

"  What  would  our  ancestors  say  to  this,  sir  ?  How  does  this 
measure  tally  with  their  institutions  ?  How  does  it  agree  with  their 
experience  ?  Are  we  to  put  the  wisdom  of  yesterday  in  compe- 
tition with  the  wisdom  of  centuries  ?  (^Hcar,  hear  !)  Is  beardless 
youth  to  show  no  respect  for  the  decisions  of  mature  age  ?  (Loud 
cries  of  hear  /  hear  /)  If  this  measure  be  right,  would  it  have 
escaped  the  wisdom  of  those  Saxon  progenitors  to  whom  we  are 
indebted  for  so  many  of  our  best  political  institutions  ?  Would 
the  Dane  have  passed  it  over  ?  Would  the  Norman  have  rejected 
it  ?  Would  such  a  notable  discovery  have  been  resei'\'ed  for  these 
modern  and  degenerate  times  ?  Besides,  sir,  if  the  measure  itself 
is  good,  I  ask  the  honourable  gentleman  if  this  is  the  time  for 
carrying  it  into  execution  —  whether,  in  fact,  a  more  unfortunate 
period  could  have  been  selected  than  that  which  he  has  chosen  ? 
If  this  were  an  ordinary  measure,  I  should  not  oppose  it  with  so 
much  vehemence  ;  but,  sir,  it  calls  in  question  the  wisdom  of  an 
irrevocable  law  —  of  a  law  passed  at  the  memorable  period  of  tin; 
Revolution.  What  right  have  we,  sir,  to  break  down  this  firni 
column,  on  which  the  great  men  of  that  age  stamped  a  character 
of  eternity?  Are  not  all  authorities  against  this  measure,  Pitt, 
Fox,  Cicero,  and  the  Attorney  and  Solicitor  General  ?  The  pi'o- 
position  is  new,  sir ;  it  is  the  first  time  it  was  ever  heard  in  this 
house.  I  am  not  prepared  sir — this  house  is  not  prepared  —  to 
receive  it.  The  measure  implies  a  distrust  of  his  majesty's  gov- 
ernment; their  disapproval  is  sufficient  to  warrant  opposition. 
Precaution  only  is  requisite  where  danger  is  apprehended.  Here 
the  high  character  of  the  individuals  in  question  is  a  sufficient 
*  From  the  sauic. 


NOODLE   ON   REFORM.  165 

^ju'antee  against  any  ground  of  alarm.  Give  not,  then,  your 
sanction  to  tliis  measure;  for  Avhatever  be  its  character,  if  jou  do 
give  your  sanction  to  it,  the  same  man  by  whom  this  is  proposed, 
will  propose  to  you  others  to  which  it  will  be  impossible  to  give 
your  consent.  I  care  very  little,  sir,  for  the  ostensible  measure ; 
but  what  is  there  behind?  What  are  the  honourable  gentlem;m's 
future  schemes  ?  J£  we  pass  this  bill,  what  fresh  concessions  may 
he  not  require  ?  Wliat  further  degradation  is  he  planning  for  his 
country  ?  Talk  of  evil  and  inconvenience,  sir  !  look  to  other  coun- 
tries—  study  other  aggregations  and  societies  of  men,  and  then  see 
whether  the  laws  of  this  country  demand  a  remedy,  or  deserve  a 
paneg}U'ic.  Was  the  honourable  gentleman  (let  me  ask  him) 
always  of  this  way  of  thinking?  Do  I  not  remember  when  he 
was  the  advocate  in  this  house  of  very  opposite  opinions  ?  I  not 
only  quarrel  with  his  present  sentiments,  sir,  but  I  declare  very 
frankly  I  do  not  like  the  party  with  which  he  acts.  If  his  own 
motives  were  as  pure  as  possible,  they  cannot  but  suffer  contami- 
nation from  those  with  whom  he  is  politically  associated.  This 
measure  may  be  a  boon  to  the  constitution,  but  I  will  accept  no 
favour  to  the  constitution  from  such  hands  (Loud  cries  of  hear ! 
hear!)  I  profess  myself,  sir,  an  honest  and  upright  member  of 
the  British  Parliament,  and  I  am  not  afraid  to  profess  myself  an 
enemy  to  all  change,  and  all  innovation.  I  am  satisfied  with  things 
as  they  are ;  and  it  will  be  my  jH'ide  and  pleasure  to  hand  down 
this  country  to  my  children  as  I  i-eceived  it  from  those  who  prece- 
ded me.  The  honourable  gentleman  pretends  to  justify  the  sever- 
ity with  which  he  has  attacked  the  noble  lord  who  presides  in  the 
Court  of  Chancery.  But  I  say  such  attacks  are  pregnant  with 
mischief  to  government  itself.  Oppose  ministers,  you  oppose 
government ;  disgrace  ministers,  you  disgrace  government ;  bring 
ministers  into  contempt,  you  bring  government  into  contempt ;  and 
anarchy  and  civil  war  are  the  consequences.  Besides,  sir,  the 
measure  is  unnecessary.  Nobody  complains  of  disorder  in  that 
shape  in  which  it  is  the  aim  of  your  measure  to  propose  a  remedy 
to  it.  The  business  is  one  of  the  greatest  importance ;  there  is 
need  of  th©  greatest  caution  and  circumspection.  Do  not  let  us  be 
precipitate,  sir ;  it  is  impossible  to  foresee  all  consequences.  Every- 
thing should  be  gradual ;  the  example  of  a  neighbouring  nation 
should  fdl  us  with  alarm  !     The  honourable  gentleman  has  taxed 


IGG  CHAELES   WATERTON. 

me  with  illiberality,  sir.  I  deny  the  charge.  I  hate  innovation, 
Vnit  I  love  improvement.  I  am  an  enemy  to  the  corruption  of 
government,  but  I  defend  its  influence.  I  dread  reform,  but  I 
dread  it  only  when  it  is  intemperate.  I  consider  the  liberty  of  the 
press  as  the  great  palladium  of  the  constitution ;  but  at  the  same 
tiriie.  I  hold  the  licentiousness  of  the  press  in  the  greatest  abhor- 
rence. Nobody  is  more  conscious  than  I  am  of  the  splendid  abil- 
ities of  the  honourable  mover,  but  I  tell  him  at  once,  his  scheme 
is  too  good  to  be  practicable.  It  savours  of  Utopia.  It  looks  well 
in  theory,  but  it  won't  do  in  practice.  It  will  not  do,  I  repeat,  sir, 
in  practice ;  and  so  the  advocates  of  the  measure  will  find,  if,  un- 
fortunately, it  should  find  its  way  through  Parliament.  (  Cheers.) 
The  source  of  that  corruption  to  which  the  honourable  member 
alludes  is  in  the  minds  of  the  people  ;  so  rank  and  extensive  is  that 
corruption,  that  no  political  reform  can  have  any  effect  in  remov- 
ing it.  Instead  of  reforming  others  —  instead  of  reforming  the 
state,  the  constitution,  and  everything  that  is  most  excellent,  let 
each  man  reform  himself!  let  him  look  at  home,  he  will  find  there 
enough  to  do,  without  looking  abroad,  and  aiming  at  what  is  out 
of  his  power.  {Loud  cheers.)  And  now,  sir,  as  it  is  frequently 
the  custom  in  this  house  to  end  with  a  quotation,  and  as  the  gen- 
tleman who  preceded  me  in  the  debate  has  anticipated  me  in  my 
favourite  quotation  of  the  'Strong  pull  and  the  long  pull,'  I  shall 
end  with  the  memorable  words  of  the  assembled  Barons  —  Nolu' 
mus  leges  Anglice  mutari." 


MR.    WATERTON    AND    HIS    WANDERINGS.* 

Mr.  "Waterton  is  a  Roman  Catholic  gentleman  of  Yorkshire, 
of  good  fortune,  who,  instead  of  passing  his  life  at  balls  and  assem- 
bhes,  has  preferred  living  with  Indians  and  monkeys  in  the  forests 
of  Guiana.  He  appears  in  early  life  to  have  been  seized  with  an 
unconquerable  aversion  to  Piccadilly,  and  to  that  p*ain  of  meteo- 
rological questions  and  answers,  which  forms  the  great  staple  of  po- 

*  WanderinKs  in  South  America,  the  North-West  of  the  United  States, 
and  the  Antilles,  in  the  years  1812,  1816,  1820,  and  1824;  with  Original  In- 
struetions  for  tlie  perfect  Presentation  of  Birds,  &c.,  for  Cabinets  of  Natural 
History.  By  Cliarles  Watertou,  Esq.  London.  Mawinan.  4to.  182fj 
Ed.  Pwev.,  Feb.,  1826. 


GUIANA.  167 

lite  English  conversation.  From  a  dislike  to  the  regular  form  of 
a  journal,  he  throws  his  travels  into  detached  pieces,  which  he 
rather  affectedly,  calls  Wanderings — and  of  which  we  shall  pro- 
ceed to  give  some  account. 

His  first  Wandering  was  m  the  year  1812,  through  the  wilds  of 
Demerara  and  Essequibo,  a  part  of  ci-devant  Dutch  Guiana,  in 
South  America.  The  sun  exhausted  him  by  day,  the  musquitoes 
bit  him  by  night :  but  on  went  Mr.  Charles  Waterton ! 

The  first  thing  which  strikes  us  in  tliis  extraordinary  chronicle, 
is  the  genuine  zeal  and  inexhaustible  delight  with  which  all  the 
barbax'ous  countries  he  visits  are  described.  He  seems  to  love  the 
forests,  the  tigers,  and  the  apes  ;  —  to  be  rejoiced  that  he  is  the 
only  man  there ;  that  he  has  left  his  species  far  away ;  and  is  at 
last  in  the  midst  of  his  blessed  baboons  !  He  writes  with  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  force  and  vigour ;  and  contrives  to  infuse  into 
his  reader  that  admiration  of  the  great  works,  and  undisturbed 
scenes  of  nature,  which  animates  his  style,  and  has  influenced  his 
life  and  practice.  There  is  something,  too,  to  be  highly  respected 
and  praised  in  the  conduct  of  a  country-gentleman,  wlio,  instead 
of  exhausting  life  in  the  chase,  has  dedicated  a  considerable  por- 
tion of  it  to  the  pursuit  of  knowledge.  There  are  so  many  temp- 
tations to  complete  idleness  in  the  life  of  a  country-gentleman,  so 
many  examples  of  it,  and  so  much  loss  to  the  community  from  it, 
that  every  exception  from  the  practice  is  deserving  of  great  praise. 
Some  country-gentlemen  must  remain  to  do  the  business  of  their 
counties  ;  but,  in  general,  there  are  many  more  than  are  wanted ; 
and,  generally  speaking  also,  they  are  a  dass  who  should  be  stim- 
ulated to  greater  exertions.  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  a  squire  of  large 
fortune  in  Lincolnshire,  might  have  given  up  his  existence  to 
double-barrelled  guns  and  persecutions  of  poachers  —  and  all  the 
benefits  derived  from  his  wealth,  industry,  and  personal  exertion  in 
the  cause  of  science,  would  have  been  lost  to  the  community. 

Mr.  Waterton  complains,  that  the  trees  of  Guiana  are  not  more 
than  six  yards  in  circumference  —  a  magnitude  in  trees  which  it  is 
not  easy  for  a  Scotch  imagination  to  reach.  Among  these,  pre- 
eminent in  height  rises  the  mora — upon  whose  top  branches,  when 
naked  by  age,  or  dried  by  accident,  is  perched  the  toucan,  too  hige 
for  the  gun  of  the  fowler;  —  around  this  are  the  green  heart, 
fiunous  for  hardness ;  the  tough  hackea ;  the  ducalabali,  surpassing 


168  DEMERAEA. 

malioganj ;  the  ebony  and  letter-wood,  exceeding  the  most  beauti- 
ful Avoods  of  the  Old  World;  the  locust-tre-e,  yielding  copal;  and 
the  hayawa  and  olou  trees,  furnishing  sweet-smelling  resin.  Upon 
the  top  of  the  mora  grows  the  fig-tree.  The  bush-rope  joins  tree 
and  tree,  so  as  to  render  the  forest  impervious,  as,  descending  fi-om 
on  liigh,  it  takes  root  as  soon  as  its  extremity  touches  the  ground, 
and  appears  like  shrouds  and  stays  supj)orting  the  mainmast  of  a 
line-of-battle  ship. 

Demerara  yields  to  no  country  in  the  world  in  her  birds.  The 
mud  is  flaming  with  the  scarlet  curlew.  At  sunset,  the  pelicans 
return  from  the  sea  to  the  courada  trees.  Among  the  flowers  are 
the  humming-birds.  The  columbine,  galhnaceous,  and  passerine 
tribes  people  the  fruit-trees.  At  the  close  of  day,  the  vampires,  or 
winged  bats,  suck  the  blood  of  the  traveller,  and  cool  him  by  the 
flap  of  their  wings.  Nor  has  nature  forgotten  to  amuse  herself 
here  in  the  composition  of  snakes: — the  camoudi  has  been  killed 
from  thirty  to  forty  feet  long ;  he  does  not  act  by  venom,  but  by 
size  and  convolution.  The  Spaniards  affirm  that  he  grows  to  the 
length  of  eighty  feet,  and  that  he  will  swallow  a  bull ;  but  Span- 
iards love  the  superlative.  There  is  a  whijisnahe  of  a  beautiful 
green.  The  labarri  snake  of  a  dirty  brown,  who  kills  you  in  a 
few  minutes.  Every  lovely  colour  under  heaven  is  lavished  upon 
the  counachouchi,  the  most  venomous  of  reptiles,  and  known  by 
name  of  the  hush-master.  Man  and  beast,  says  Mr.  Waterton,  fly 
before  him,  and  allow  him  to  pursue  an  undisputed  path 

One  of  the  strange  and  fanciful  objects  of  Mr.  Waterton's  jour- 
ney was,  to  obtain  a  better  knowledge  of  the  composition  and  na- 
ture of  the  Wourali  poison,  the  ingredient  with  which  the  Indians 
poison  their  arrows.  In  the  wilds  of  Essequibo,  far  away  from 
any  European  settlements,  there  is  a  tribe  of  Indians  known  by 
the  name  of  Macoushi.  The  Wourali  poison  is  used  by  all  the 
South  American  savages,  betwixt  the  Amazon  and  the  Oroonoque  ; 
but  the  Macoushi  Indians  manufacture  it  with  the  greatest  skill, 
and  of  the  greatest  strength.  A  vine  grows  in  the  forest  called 
Wourali ;  and  from  this  vine,  together  with  a  good  deal  of  nonsense 
and  absurdity,  the  poison  is  prepared.  When  a  native  of  Macou- 
shia  goes  in  quest  of  feathered  game,  he  seldom  carries  his  bow 
and  arrows.  It  is  the  blow-pipe  he  then  uses.  The  reed  growti 
to  an  amazing  length,  as  the  part  the  Indians  use  is  from  10  to  11 


THE   WOURALI   POISON.  169 

feet  long,  and  no  ta[»c'ring  can  be  perceived,  one  end  being  as  lliiek 
as  another ;  nor  is  there  the  slightest  appearance  of  a  knot  or  joint. 
The  end  which  is  applied  to  the  mouth  is  tied  round  with  a  small 
silk  grass  cord.  The  arrow  is  from  nine  to  ten  inches  long ;  it  is 
made  out  of  the  leaf  of  a  palm-tree,  and  pointed  as  sharp  as  a 
needle :  about  an  inch  of  the  pointed  end  is  poisoned :  the  other 
end  is  burnt  to  make  it  still  harder;  and  wild  cotton  is  put  round 
it  for  an  inch  and  a  half.  The  quiver  holds  from  500  to  GOO  ar- 
rows, is  from  12  to  14  inches  long,  and  in  shape  like  a  dice-box. 
"With  a  quiver  of  these  poisoned  arrows  over  his  shoulder,  and  his 
blow-pipe  in  his  hand,  the  Indian  stalks  into  the  forest  in  quest  of 
his  feathered  game 

Being  a  Wourali  poison  fancier,  Mr.  Waterton  has  recorded 
several  instances  of  the  power  of  his  favourite  drug.  A  sloth 
poisoned  by  it  went  gently  to  sleep,  and  died!  a  large  ox,  weigh- 
ing one  thousand  pounds,  was  shot  with  three  arrows ;  the  poison 
took  effect  in  four  minutes,  and  in  twenty-five  minutes  he  was 
dead.  The  death  seems  to  be  very  gentle  ;  and  resembles  more  a 
quiet  apoplexy,  brought  on  by  hearing  a  long  story,  than  any 
other  kind  of  death.  If  an  Indian  happen  to  be  wounded  with 
one  of  these  arrows,  he  considers  it  as  certain  death.  We  have 
reason  to  congratulate  ourselves,  that  our  method  of  terminating 
disputes  is  by  sword  and  pistol,  and  not  by  these  medicated  pins ; 
which,  we  presume,  will  become  the  weapons  of  gentlemen  in  the 
new  republics  of  South  America. 

The  second  journey  of  Mr.  Waterton,  in  the  year  1816,  was  to 
Pernambuco,  in  the  southern  hemisphere,  on  the  coast  of  Brazil, 
and  from  thence  he  proceeds  to  Cayenne.  His  plan  was  to  have 
ascended  the  Amazon  from  Para,  and  got  into  the  Rio  Negro,  and 
from  thence  to  have  returned  toward  the  source  of  the  Essequibo, 
in  order  to  examine  the  Crystal  Mountains,  and  to  look  once  more 
for  Lake  Parima,  or  the  White  Sea ;  but  on  arriving  at  Cayenne, 
he  found  that  to  beat  up  the  Amazon  would  be  long  and  tedious ; 
he  left  Cayenne,  therefore  in  an  American  ship  for  Paramaribo, 
went  through  the  interior  to  Coryntin,  stopped  a  few  days  at  New 
Amsteitlam,  and  proceeded  to  Demerara. 

"Leave  behind  you,"  he  says  to  the  traveller,  "your  high-seasoned  dishes, 
your  wines,  and  your  delicacies ,  carry  nothing  but  what  is  necessary  for 
your  own  comfort,  and  tiie  object  in  view,  and  depend  upon  the  skill  of  an 

8 


170  THE    CAMPANERO. 

Indian,  or  your  own,  for  nsh  and  game.  A  sheet,  about  twelve  fei,t  lont^ 
ten  wide,  painted,  and  with  loop-holes  on  each  side,  will  be  of  great  service : 
in  a  few  minutes  you  can  suspend  it  betwixt  two  trees  in  the  shape  of  a  roof. 
Under  this,  in  your  hammock,  you  may  defy  the  pelting  shower,  and  sleci; 
heedless  of  the  dews  of  night.  A  hat,  a  shirt,  and  a  light  pair  of  trowscrs, 
will  be  all  the  raiment  you  require.  Custom  will  soon  teach  you  to  tread 
lightly  and  barefoot  on  the  little  inequalities  of  the  ground  and  shov/  you 
how  to  pass  on,  unwounded  amid  the  mantling  briars." 

Snakes  are  certainly  an  annoyance ;  but  the  snake,  though  high- 
spirited,  is  not  quarrelsome ;  he  considers  his  fangs  to  be  given  for 
defence,  and  not  for  annoyance,  and  never  inflicts  a  wound  but  to 
defend  existence.  If  you  tread  upon  him,  he  puts  you  to  death 
for  your  clumsiness,  merely  because  he  does  not  understand  what 
your  clumsiness  means ;  and  certainly  a  snake,  who  feels  fourteen 
or  fifteen  stone  stamping  upon  his  tail,  has  little  time  for  reflection, 
and  may  be  allowed  to  be  poisonous  and  peevish.  American  tigers 
generally  run  away  —  from  which  several  respectable  gentlemen 
in  Parliament  inferred,  in  the  American  war,  that  American 
soldiers  would  run  away  also  ! 

The  description  of  the  birds  is  very  animated  and  interesting ; 
but  how  far  does  the  gentle  reader  imagine  the  campanero  may 
be  heard,  whose  size  is  that  of  a  jay?  Perhaps  300  yards.  Poor 
innocent,  ignorant  reader  !  unconscious  of  what  nature  has  done  in 
the  forests  of  Cayenne,  and  measuring  the  force  of  tropical  intona- 
tion by  the  sounds  of  a  Scotch  duck !  The  campanero  may  be 
heard  three  miles!  —  this  single  little  bird  being  more  powerful 
than  the  belfry  of  a  cathedral,  ringing  for  a  new  dean — just  ap- 
pointed on  account  of  shabby  politics,  small  understanding,  and 
good  fiimily ! 

"  Tlie  fifth  species  is  the  celebrated  campanero  of  the  Spaniards,  called 
dara  by  the  Indians,  and  bell-bird  by  the  English.  He  is  about  the  size  of 
the  jay.  His  plumage  is  white  as  snow.  On  liis  forehead  rises  a  spiral  tube 
nearly  three  inches  long.  It  is  jet  black,  dotted  all  over  with  small  white 
feathers.  It  has  a  communication  with  the  palate,  and  when  filled  with  air, 
looks  like  a  spire ;  wiien  empty,  it  becomes  pendulous.  His  note  is  loud  and 
clear,  like  the  sound  of  a  bell,  and  may  be  heaul  at  tlie  distance  of  three 
miles.  In  the  midst  of  these  extensive  wilds,  generally  on  the  dried  top  of 
an  aged  mora,  almost  out  of  gun  reach,  you  will  see  the  campanero.  No 
sound  or  song  from  any  of  the  winged  inhabitants  of  the  forest,  not  even  the 
clearly  pronounced  '  Whip-poor-Will,'  from  the  goatsucker,  causes  such  as 
tonishment  as  the  toll  of  the  campanero. 

"  With  many  of  the  feathered  race  he  pays  the  common  tribute  of  a  morn- 


WUIP-PuOR-WILL.  171 

ing  and  an  evening  song ;  and  even  when  the  meridian  sun  has  sliut  in  silence 
the  mouths  of  almost  the  whole  of  animated  nature,  tho  campanero  still 
cheers  tho  forest.  You  hear  his  toll,  and  then  a  pause  for  a  minute,  then 
another  toll,  and  then  a  pause  again,  and  then  a  toll,  and  again  a  pause." 

It  is  impossible  to  contradict  a  gentleman  who  has  been  in  the 
forests  of  Cayenne ;  but  we  are  determined,  as  soon  as  a  campa- 
nero is  brought  to  England,  to  make  him  toll  in  a  public  place, 
and  have  the  distance  measured.  The  toucan  has  an  enormous 
bill,  makes  a  noise  like  a  puppy-dog,  and  lays  his  eggs  in  hollow 
trees.  How  astonishing  are  the  freaks  and  fancies  of  nature  !  To 
what  purpose,  we  say,  is  a  bird  placed  in  the  woods  of  Cayenne, 
with  a  bill  a  yard  long,  making  a  noise  like  a  puppy-dog,  and 
laying  eggs  in  hollow  trees  ?  The  toucans,  to  be  sure,  might 
retort,  to  what  purpose  were  gentlemen  in  Bond  street  created  ? 
To  what  purpose  were  certain  foolish,  prating  members  of  Parlia- 
ment created  —  pestering  the  House  of  Commons  with  their  igno- 
rance and  folly,  and  impeding  the  business  of  the  country  ?  There 
is  no  end  of  such  questions.  So  we  will  not  enter  into  the  meta- 
physics of  the  toucan.  The  houtou  ranks  high  in  beauty ;  his 
whole  body  is  green,  his  wings  and  tail  blue ;  his  crown  is  of  black 
and  blue  ;  he  makes  no  nest,  but  rears  his  young  in  the  sand. 

There  is  no  end  to  the  extraordinary  noises  of  the  forest  of 
Cayenne.  The  woodpecker,  in  striking  against  the  tree  with  his 
bill,  makes  a  sound  so  loud,  that  Mr.  Waterton  says  it  reminds 
you  more  of  a  wood-cutter  than  a  bird.  While  lying  in  your  ham- 
mock, you  hear  the  goatsucker  lamenting  like  one  in  deep  distress 
— a  stranger  would  take  it  for  a  Weir  murdered  by  Thurtell. 

"  Suppose  yourself  in  hopeless  sorrow,  begin  with  a  high  loud  note,  and 
pronounce,  'ha,  ha,  ha,  ha,  ha,  ha,  ha,'  each  note  lower  and  lower,  till  the  last 
is  scarcely  heard,  pausing  a  moment  or  two  betwixt  every  note,  and  you  will 
have  some  idea  of  the  moaning  of  the  largest  goatsucker  in  Denierara." 

One  species  of  the  goatsucker  cries,  "  Who  are  you  ?  who  are 
you  ?"  Another  exclaims,  "  Work  away,  work  away."  A  third, 
"  Willy  come  go,  Willy  come  go."  A  fourth,  "  Whip  poor  Will, 
whip  poor  Will."  It  is  very  flattering  to  us  that  they  should  all 
speak  English! — though  we  cannot  much  commend  the  elegance 
of  their  ^elections.  The  Indians  never  destroy  these  birds,  be- 
lieving them  to  be  the  servants  of  Jumbo,  the  African  devil. 

Great  travellers  are  very  fond  of  triumphing  over  civilized  life; 
and  Mr.  Waterton  does  not  omit  the  opportunity  of  remarking. 


172  SIR   JOSEPH   BANKS. 

tliat  nobody  ever  stopped  him  in  the  forests  of  Cayenne  to  ask 
him  for  his  hcense,  or  to  inquire  if  he  had  a  hundred  a  year,  or 
to  take  away  his  gun,  or  to  dispute  the  limits  of  a  manor,  or  to 
threaten  him  with  a  tropical  justice  of  the  peace.  We  hope, 
however,  that  in  this  point  we  are  on  the  eve  of  improvement. 
Mr.  Peel,  who  is  a  man  of  high  character  and  principles,  may 
depend  upon  it  that  the  time  is  come  for  his  interference,  and  that 
it  will  be  a  loss  of  reputation  to  him  not  to  interfere.  If  any  one 
else  can  and  will  carry  an  alteration  through  Parhament,  there  is 
no  occasion  that  the  hand  of  government  should  appear ;  but  some 
hand  must  appear.  The  common  people  are  becoming  ferocious, 
and  the  perdricide  criminals  are  more  numerous  than  the  violators 
of  all  the  branches  of  the  Decalogue. 

"  The  king  of  the  vultures  is  very  handsome,  and  seems  to  be  the  only 
bird  which  claims  regal  honours  from  a  surrounding  tribe.  It  is  a  fact  beyond 
all  dispute,  that  when  the  scent  of  carrion  has  drawn  together  hundreds 
of  the  coinniou  vultures,  they  all  retire  from  the  carcass  as  soon  as  the  king 
of  the  vultures  makes  his  appearance.  When  his  majesty  has  satisfied  the 
cravings  of  his  royal  stomach  with  the  choicest  bits  from  the  most  stinking 
and  corrupted  parts,  he  generally  retires  to  a  neighbouring  tree,  and  then  the 
common  vultures  return  in  crowds  to  gobble  down  his  leavings.  The  In- 
dians, as  well  as  the  whites,  have  observed  this  ;  for  when  one  of  them,  who 
has  learned  a  little  English,  sees  the  king,  and  wishes  you  to  have  a  proper 
notion  of  the  bird,  he  says,  '  There  is  the  governor  of  the  carrion  crows.' 

"Now,  the  Indians  have  never  heard  of  a  personage  in  Demerara  higher 
than  that  of  governor;  and  the  colonists,  through  a  common  mistake,  call 
the  vultures  carrion  crows.  Hence  the  Indian,  in  order  to  express  the  do- 
minion of  this  bird  over  the  common  vultures,  tells  you  he  is  governor  of  the 
carrion  crows.  The  Spaniards  have  also  observed  it,  for,  through  all  the 
Spanish  Main,  he  is  called  Rey  de  Zamuros,  king  of  the  vultures." 

This,  we  think,  explains  satisfactorily  the  origin  of  kingly  gov- 
ernment. As  men  have  "  learnt  from  the  dog  the  physic  of  the 
field,"  they  may  probably  have  learnt  from  the  vulture  those  high 
lessons  of  policy  upon  which,  in  Europe,  we  suppose  the  whole 
happiness  of  society,  and  the  very  existence  of  the  human  race, 
to  depend. 

Just  before  his  third  journey,  Mr.  AVaterton  takes  leave  of  Sir 
Joseph  Banks,  and  speaks  of  him  with  affectionate  regret.  "I 
saw,"  says  Mr.  W.,  "  with  sorrow,  that  death  was  going  to  rob  us 
of  him.  We  talked  of  stuffmg  quadrupeds  ;  I  agreed  that  the  lips 
and  nose  ought  to  be  cut  off",  and  stuffed  with  wax."  This  is  the 
way  great  naturalists    take  an  eternal   farewell   of  each   other/ 


THE   SLOTH.  173 

Upon  stuffing  animals,  however,  we  have  a  word  to  sny.  I\I)'. 
"Watei'ton  has  placed  at  the  head  of  his  biiok  the  picture  of  what 
he  is  pleased  to  consider  a  nondescript  species  of  monkey.  In  this 
exhibition  our  author  is  surely  abusing  his  stuffing  talents,  and 
laughing  at  the  public.  It  is  clearly  the  head  of  a  master  in  chan- 
cery—  whom  we  have  often  seen  backing  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons after  he  has  delivered  his  message.  It  is  foolish  thus  to 
trifle  with  science  and  natural  history.  Mr.  Waterton  gives  an 
interesting  account  of  the  sloth,  an  animal  of  which  he  appears  to 
be  fond,  and  whose  liabits  he  has  studied  with  peculiar  attention. 

"  Some  years  ap:o  I  kept  a  sloth  in  my  room  for  several  months.  I  often 
took  him  out  of  the  house  and  placed  him  upon  tlie  ground,  in  order  to  have 
an  opiiortunity  of  obsen'ing  his  motions.  If  the  ground  were  rough,  lie 
would  pull  himself  forward,  by  means  of  his  fore  legs,  at  a  pretty  good  pace  ; 
and  he  invariably  shaped  his  course  toward  the  nearest  tree.  But  if  I  put 
him  upon  a  smooth  and  well-trodden  part  of  the  road,  he  appeared  to  be  iu 
trouble  and  distress :  his  favourite  abode  was  the  back  of  a  chair ;  and  after 
getting  all  his  legs  in  a  line  upon  the  topmost  part  of  it,  he  would  hang  there 
for  hours  together,  and  often,  with  a  low  and  inward  ciy,  would  seem  to  in- 
vite me  to  take  notice  of  him." 

The  sloth,  in  its  wild  state,  spends  its  life  in  trees,  and  never 
leaves  them  but  from  force  or  accident.  The  eagle  to  the  sky,  the 
mole  to  the  ground,  the  sloth  to  the  tree ;  but  what  is  most  extra- 
ordinary, he  lives  not  upon  the  branches,  but  under  them.  He 
moves  suspended,  rests  suspended,  sleeps  suspended,  and  passes 
his  life  in  suspense  —  like  a  young  clergyman  distantly  related  to  a 
bishop.  Strings  of  ants  may  be  observed,  says  our  good  traveller, 
a  mile  long,  each  carrying  in  its  mouth  a  green  leaf  the  size  of  a 
sixpence !  he  does  not  say  whether  this  is  a  loyal  procession,  like 
Oak-apple  Day,  or  for  what  purpose  these  leaves  are  carried ;  but 
it  appears,  while  they  are  carrying  the  leaves,  that  three  sorts  of 
ant-bears  arc  busy  in  eating  them.  The  habits  of  the  largest  of 
these  three  animals  are  curious,  and  to  us  new.  We  recommend 
the  account  to  the  attcnlion  of  the  reader. 

"He  is  chiefly  found  in  the  inmost  recesses  of  the  forest,  and  seems  partial 
ro  the  low  and  swampy  parts  near  creeks,  where  the  Trooly  tree  grows. 
Tl^ere  he  goes  up  and  down  in  quest  of  ants,  of  which  there  is  never  the 
least  scarcity ;  so  that  he  soon  obtains  a  sufficient  supply  of  food,  with  very 
little  trouble.  He  can  not  travel  fiist;  man  is  sujicrior  to  him  in  speed. 
Without  swiftness  to  enable  him  to  escape  from  his  enemies,  without  teeth, 
the  possession  of  which  would  assist  him  in  self  defence,  and  without  the 


174  THE  VAMPIRE. 

power  of  burrowing  in  the  ground,  by  which  he  might  conceal  himself  from 
his  pursuers,  he  still  is  capable  of  ranging  through  these  wilds  in  perfect  safe- 
ty, nor  does  he  fear  the  fatal  pressure  of  the  serpent's  fold,  or  the  teeth  of  the 
famished  jaguar.  Nature  has  formed  his  fore-legs  wonderfully  thick,  and 
strong,  and  muscular,  and  armed  his  feet  with  three  tremendous  sharp  and 
crooked  claws.  Whenever  he  seizes  an  animal  with  these  formidable  weap- 
ons, he  hugs  it  close  to  his  body  and  keeps  it  there  till  it  dies  througli  pres- 
sure, or  through  want  of  food.  Nor  does  the  ant-bear,  in  the  meantime,  suf- 
fer much  from  loss  of  aliment,  as  it  is  a  well-known  fiict,  that  he  can  go 
longer  without  food  than  perhaps  any  other  animal,  except  the  land  tortoise. 
His  skin  is  of  a  texture  that  perfectly  resists  the  bite  of  a  dog;  his. hinder 
parts  are  protected  by  tliick  and  shaggy  hair,  while  his  immense  tail  is  large 
enough  to  cover  his  whole  body. 

"  The  Indians  have  a-  great  dread  of  coming  in  contact  with  the  ant-bear; 
and,  after  disabling  him  iu  the  chase,  never  think  of  approaching  him  till  he 
be  quite  dead." 

The  vampire  measures  about  twenty-six  inches  from  wing  to 
wing.  There  are  two  species,  large  and  small.  The  large  suck 
men,  and  the  smaller,  birds.  Mr.  "VV.  saw  some  fowls  which  had 
been  sucked  the  night  before,  and  they  were  scarcely  able  to  walk. 

"  Some  yeai-s  ago  I  went  to  the  river  Paumaron  with  a  Scotch  gentleman, 
by  name  Tarbet.  We  hung  our  hammocks  in  the  thatched  loft  of  a  planter's 
house.  Next  morning  I  heard  this  gentleman  muttering  in  his  hammock, 
and  now  and  then  letting  fall  an  imprecation  or  two,  just  about  the  time 
he  ouglit  to  have  been  saying  his  morning  prayers.  '  What  is  the  matter, 
sir?'  said  I,  softly;  'is  anything  amiss?' — 'What's  the  matter?'  answered 
he,  surlily ;  '  why,  the  vampires  have  been  sucking  me  to  death.'  As  soon 
as  there  was  light  enough,  I  went  to  his  hammock,  and  saw  it  much  stained 
with  blood.  '  There,'  said  he,  thrusting  his  foot  out  of  the  hammock,  '  see 
how  these  infernal  imps  have  been  drawing  my  life's  blood.'  On  examining 
his  foot,  I  found  the  vampire  had  tapped  his  great  toe :  there  was  a  wound " 
somewhat  less  than  that  made  by  a  leech ;  the  blood  was  still  oozing  from  it ; 
I  conjectured  he  might  have  lost  from  ten  to  twelve  ounces  of  blood.  Whilst 
examining  it,  I  think  I  put  him  into  a  worse  humour,  by  remarking,  that  a 
European  surgeon  would  not  have  been  so  generous  as  to  have  blooded  him 
without  making  a  charge.  He  looked  up  in  my  face,  but  did  not  say  a  word : 
I  saw  he  was  of  opinion  tiiat  I  had  better  have  spared  this  piece  of  ill-timed 
levity." 

The  story  which  follows  this  account  is  vulgar,  unworthy  of 
Mr.  Waterton,  and  should  have  been  omitted. 

Every  animal  has  its  enemies.  The  land-tortoise  has  two  ene- 
mies, man  and  the  boa-constrictor.  The  natural  defence  of  the  land- 
tortoise  is  to  draw  himself  up  in  his  shell,  and  to  remain  quiet.  In 
^his  state,  the  tiger,  however  famished,  can  do  nothing  with  him. 


INSECTS   OF  THE  TROPICS.  175 

for  tlie  shell  is  too  strong  for  the  stroke  of  his  paw.  Man,  how- 
ever, takes  him  home  and  roasts  him — and  the  boa-constrictor 
swallows  him  wh  ile,  shell  and  all,  and  consumes  him  slowly  in  the 
interior,  as  the  Court  of  Chancery  does  a  great  estate. 

The  danger  seems  to  be  much  less  with  snakes  and  wild  beasts, 
if  you  conduct  yourself  like  a  gentleman,  and  are  not  abruptly  in- 
trusive. If  you  will  pass  on  gently,  you  may  walk  unhurt  within 
a  yard  of  the  Labairi  snake,  who  would  put  you  to  death  if  you 
rushed  upon  him.  The  taguan  knocks  you  down  with  a  blow  of 
his  paw,  if  suddenly  interrupted,  but  will  run  away,  if  you  will  give 
him  time  to  do  so.  In  short,  most  animals  look  upon  man  as  a 
very  ugly  customer ;  and,  unless  sorely  pressed  for  food,  or  from 
fear  of  their  own  safety,  are  not  fond  of  attacking  him.  Mr.  Wat- 
erton,  though  much  given  to  sentiment,  made  a  Labairi  snake  bite 
itself,  but  no  bad  consequences  ensued — nor  would  any  bad  con- 
sequences ensue,  if  a  court-martial  were  to  order  a  sinful  soldier 
to  give  himself  a  thousand  lashes.  It  is  barely  possible  that  the 
snake  had  some  faint  idea  of  whom  and  what  he  was  biting. 

Insects  are  the  curse  of  tropical  climates.  The  bete  rouge  lays 
the  foundation  of  a  tremendous  ulcer.  In  a  moment  you  are  cov- 
ered with  ticks.  Chigoes  bury  themselves  in  your  flesh,  and  hatch  a 
large  colony  of  young  chigoes  in  a  few  hours.  They  will  not  live  to- 
gethei",  but  every  chigoe  sets  up  a  separate  ulcer,  and  has  his  own 
private  portion  of  pus.  Flies  get  entry  into  your  mouth,  into  your 
eyes,  into  your  nose ;  you  eat  flies,  drink  flies,  and  breathe  flies. 
Lizards,  cockroaches,  and  snakes,  get  into  the  bed;  ants  eat  up 
the  books ;  scorpions  sting  you  on  the  foot.  Everything  bites, 
stings,  or  bruises  ;  every  second  of  your  existence  you  are  wound- 
ed by  some  piece  of  animal  life  that  nobody  has  ever  seen  before, 
except  Swammerdam  and  Meriam.  An  insect  with  eleven  legs  is 
swimming  in  your  teacup,  a  nondescript  with  nine  wings  is  strug- 
gUng  in  the  small  beer,  or  a  caterpillar  with  several  dozen  eyes  in 
his  belly  is  hastening  over  the  bread  and  butter !  All  nature  is 
alive,  and  seems  to  be  gathering  all  her  entomological  hosts  to  eat 
you  up,  as  you  are  standing,  out  of  your  coat,  waistcoat,  and 
breeches.  Such  are  the  tropics.  All  this  reconciles  us  to  our 
dews,  fogs,  vapours,  and  drizzle  —  to  our  apothecaries  rushing  about 
with  gargles  and  tinctures — to  our  old,  British,  constitutional 
coughs,  sore  throats,  and  swelled  faces 


176  GRANBY. 

Now,  what  shall  Ave  say,  after  all,  of  Mr.  "Waterton?  Tliat  hi^ 
has  spent  a  great  part  of  his  life  in  wandering  in  the  Avild  scenes 
he  describes,  and  that  he  describes  them  with  entertaining  zeal  and 
real  feeling.  His  stories  draw  largely  sometimes  on  our  faith: 
but  a  man  who  lives  in  the  woods  of  Cayenne  must  do  many  odd 
things,  and  see  many  odd  things  —  things  utterly  unknown  to  the 
dwellers  in  Hackney  and  Ilighgate.  We  do  not  want  to  rein  up 
Mr.  "Waterton  too  tightly — because  we  are  convinced  he  goes  best 
with  his  head  free.  But  a  little  less  of  apostrophe,  and  some  faint 
suspicion  of  his  own  powers  of  humour,  would  improve  this  gentle- 
man's style.  As  it  is,  he  has  a  considerable  talent  at  describing. 
He  abounds  with  good  feeling ;  and  has  written  a  very  entertain- 
ing book,  which  hurries  the  reader  out  of  his  European  parlour, 
into  the  heart  of  tropical  forests,  and  gives,  over  the  rules  and  the 
cultivation  of  the  civilized  parts  of  the  earth,  a  momentary  superi- 
ority to  the  freedom  of  the  savage,  and  the  wild  beauties  of  nature. 
"We  honestly  recommend  the  book  to  our  readers :  it  is  well  worth 
the  perusal. 


GRANBY. 


There  is  nothing  more  amusing  in  the  spectacles  of  the  present 
day,  than  to  see  the  Sir  Johns  and  Sir  Thomases  of  the  House  of 
Commons  struck  aghast  by  the  useful  science  and  wise  novelties 
of  Mr.  Huskisson  and  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer.  Treason, 
Disaffection,  Atheism,  Republicanism,  and  Socinianism — the  gi-eat 
guns  in  the  Noodle's  park  of  artillery,  they  cannot  bring  to 
bear  upon  these  gentlemen.  P^ven  to  charge  with  a  regiment 
of  ancestors,  is  not  quite  so  efficacious  as  it  used  to  be ;  and  all 
that  remains,  therefore,  is  to  rail  against  Peter  M'CuUoch  and 
Political  Economy !  In  the  meantime,  day  after  day,  down  goes 
one  piece  of  nonsense  or  another.  The  most  approved  trash, 
and  the  most  trusty  clamours,  are  found  to  be  utterly  powerless. 
Two-penny  taunts  and  trumpery  truisms  have  lost  their  destructive 
omnipotence  :  and  the  exhausted  commonplace-man,  and  the  afflict- 
ed fool,  moan  over  the  ashes  of  Imbecility,  and  strew  flowers  on 
the  urn  of  Ignorance  !    General  Elliot  found  the  London  tailors  in  a 

*  Grnnhv.     A  Novel  in  Three  Volumes.     London,  Colbarn.  1826.     V.i 
Rev.,  Feb..  182< 


A   NOVEL.  1 1  , 

Slate  of  mutiny,  and  he  raised  from  them  a  regiment  of  light  cav- 
uhy,  which  distinguislicd  itself  in  a  very  striking  manner  at  the 
battle  of  Minden.  In  humble  imitation  of  this  example,  we  shall 
avail  ourselves  of  the  present  political  disaffection  and  unsatisfac- 
tory idleness  of  many  men  of  rank  and  consecjuence,  to  request 
their  attention  to  the  Novel  of  Granby — written,  as  we  have  heard, 
by  a  young  gentleman  of  the  name  of  Lister  ;*  and  from  wliich  we 
have  derived  a  considerable  deal  of  pleasure  and  entertainment. 

The  main  question  as  to  a  novel  is  —  did  it  amuse  ?  Were  you 
surprised  at  dinner  coming  so  soon  ?  did  you  mistake  eleven  for 
ten,  and  twelve  for  eleven  ?  were  you  too  late  to  dress  ?  and  did 
you  sit  up  beyond  the  usual  hour  ?  If  a  novel  produces  these 
effects,  it  is  good;  if  it  does  not — story,  language,  love,  scandal 
itself,  cannot  save  it.  It  is  only  meant  to  please,  and  it  must  do 
that,  or  it  does  nothing.  Now  Granby  seems  toSis  to  answer  this 
t€«t  extremely  well ;  it  produces  unpunctuality,  makes  the  reader 
too  late  for  dinner,  impatient  of  contradiction,  and  inattentive  — 
even  if  a  bishop  is  making  an  observation,  or  a  gentleman  lately 
from  the  Pyramids,  or  the  Upper  Cataracts,  is  let  loose  upon  the 
drawing-room.  The  objection,  indeed,  to  these  compositions,  when 
they  are  well  done,  is,  that  it  is  impossible  to  do  anything,  or  per- 
form any  human  duty,  while  we  are  engaged  in  them.  Who  can 
read  Mr.  Hallam's  Middle  Ages,  or  extract  the  root  of  an  impos- 
sible quantity,  or  draw  up  a  bond,  Avhen  he  is  in  the  middle  of  Mr 
Trebeck  and  Lady  Charlotte  Duncan  ?  How  can  the  boy's  lesson 
be  heard,  about  the  Jove-nourished  Achilles,  or  his  six  miserable 
verses  upon  Dido  be  corrected,  when  Henry  Granby  and  Mr. 
Courtenay  are  both  making  love  to  Miss  Jermyn  ?  Common  life 
palls  in  the  middle  of  these  artificial  scenes.  All  is  emotion  when 
the  book  is  open — all  dull,  flat,  and  feeble,  when  it  is  shut. 

Granby,  a  young  man  of  no  profession,  living  with  an  old  uncle 
in  the  country,  fulls  in  love  with  Miss  .Jermyn,  and  Miss  .Jcu'myn 
with  him ;  but  Sir  Thomas  and  Lady  Jermyn,  as  the  young  gen- 

*  This  is  tlie  gentleman  who  now  keeps  tlie  keys  of  Life  and  Death,  the 
Janitor  of  the  worUl. — A'ltlior's  Note.  Thomas  Henry  Lister,  1801-1842,  held 
the  office  of  llegistrar-General  of  Births,  Deaths  and  Marria^jes.  Besides 
Granby,  Mr.  Lister  published  Herbert  Tjaoy,  a  Novel ;  Epicharis,  an  Histori- 
r:il  Tragedy,  performed  in  1829,  at  Drury  Lane  ;  the  Life  and  Administration 
of  Edward,  First  Earl  of  Clai'cndon,  and  other  writings.  He  was  brothei--in 
law  of  Lord  John  Russell. 

8* 


178  POWER   OF    A   NOVELIST. 

tlemaii  is  not  rich,  having  discovered  by  long  living  in  the  world, 
and  patient  observation  of  its  ways,  that  young  people  are  cora- 
monly  Malthus-proof  and  have  cliildren,  and  that  young  and  old 
must  eat,  very  naturally  do  wbat  they  can  to  discourage  the  union. 
The  young  people,  hov/ever,  both  go  to  town — meet  at  balls  — 
flutter,  blush,  look  and  cannot  speak — speak  and  cannot  look  — 
suspect,  misinterpret,  are  sad  and  mad,  peevish  and  jealous,  fond 
and  foolish ;  but  the  passion,  after  all,  seems  less  near  to  its  ac- 
complishment at  the  end  of  the  season  than  the  beginning.  The 
uncle  of  Granby,  however,  dies,  and  leaves  to  his  nephew  a  state- 
ment, accompanied  with  the  requisite  proofs  —  that  Mr.  Tyrrel,  the 
supposed  son  of  Lord  Malton,  is  illegitimate,  and  that  he,  Granby, 
is  the  heir  to  Lord  Malton's  fortune.  The  second  volume  is  now 
far  advanced,  and  it  is  time  for  Loi'd  Malton  to  die.  Accord- 
ingly Mr.  Lister  very  judiciously  despatches  him ;  Granby  inherits 
the  estate — his  virtues  (for  what  shows  off  virtue  like  land?)  are 
discovered  by  the  Jermyns — and  they  marry  in  the  last  act. 

Upon  this  slender  story,  the  author  has  succeeded  in  making  a 
very  agreeable  and  interesting  novel ;  and  he  has  succeeded,  we 
think,  chiefly,  by  the  very  easy  and  natural  picture  of  manners,  as 
they  really  exist  among  the  upper  classes ;  by  the  description  of 
new  characters,  judiciously  drawn  and  faithfully  preserved ;  and 
by  the  introduction  of  many  striking  and  well-managed  incidents ; 
and  we  are  particularly  struck  throughout  the  whole  with  the  dis- 
cretion and  good  sense  of  the  author.  He  is  never  nimious  ;  there 
is  nothing  in  excess  ;  there  is  a  good  deal  of  fancy  and  a  great  deal 
of  spirit  at  work,  but  a  directing  and  superintending  judgment 
rarely  quits  him 

Tremendous  is  the  power  of  a  novelist !  K  four  or  five  men 
are  in  a  room,  and  show  a  disposition  to  break  the  peace,  no  human 
magistrate  (not  even  Mr.  Justice  Bayley)  could  do  more  than 
bind  them  over  to  keep  the  peace,  and  commit  them  if  they  re- 
fused. But  the  writer  of  the  novel  stands  with  a  pen  in  his  hand, 
and  can  run  any  of  them  through  the  body — can  knock  down  any 
one  individual,  and  keep  the  others  upon  their  legs ;  or,  like  the 
last  scene  in  the  first  tragedy  written  by  a  young  man  of  genius, 
can  put  them  all  to  death.  Now,  an  author  possessing  such  extra- 
ordinary privileges,  should  not  have  allowed  Mr.  Tyrrel  to  strike 
Granby.     This  is  ill-managed ;  particularly  as  Granby  does  not 


INNS.  179 

return  the  blow,  or  turn  him  out  of  the  house.  Nobody  shoukl 
sutler  his  hero  to  have  a  black  eye,  or  to  be  pulled  by  the  nose. 
The  Iliad  would  never  have  come  down  to  these  times  if  Aga- 
memnon had  given  Achilles  a  box  on  the  ear.  We  should  have 
trembled  for  the  -ZEne.d,  if  any  Tyrian  nobleman  had  kicked  the 
pious  -3i^neas  in  the  4th  book.  -Silneas  may  have  deserved  it ;  but 
he  could  not  have  founded  the  Roman  empu-e  after  so  distressing 
an  accident. 


PUBLIC-HOUSES   AND    DRINKING.* 

What  the  poor  shall  drink — how  they  shall  drink  it — in  pint 
cups  or  quai't  mugs  —  hot  or  cold — in  the  morning  or  the  evening 
— whether  the  Three  Pigeons  shall  be  shut  up,  and  the  Shoulder 
of  Mutton  be  opened — whether  the  Black  Horse  shall  continue  to 
swing  in  the  air — or  the  White  Horse,  with  animated  crest  and 
tail,  no  longer  portend  spirits  within :  all  these  great  questions 
depend  upon  little  clumps  of  squires  and  parsons  gathered  together 
in  alehouses  in  the  month  of  September — so  portentous  to  publi- 
cans and  partridges,  to  sots  and  sportsmen,  to  guzzling  and  game. 

"  I  am  by  no  means  a  friend  to  the  multipUcation  of  public- 
houses,"  says  a  plump  perdricide  gentleman  in  loose  mud-coloured 
gaiters,  bottle-green  jacket  and  brass  buttons.  Perhaps  not ;  but 
you  are  a  friend  to  the  multiplication  of  inns.  You  ai'e  well  aware, 
that  in  your  journeys  to  Buxton,  Harrowgate,  and  Bath,  the  com- 
petition of  inns  keeps  down  the  price  of  your  four  post-horses,  and 
secures  for  you  and  yours  the  most  reverential  awe,  from  Boots 
upward  to  the  crafty  proprietor  himself  of  the  house  of  enter- 
tainment. From  what  other  cause  the  sudden  and  overwhelming 
tumult  at  the  Dragon?  —  ^Yliy  the  agonizing  cry  of  Jirst  inn! 
^Yby  is  cake  and  jelly  pushed  in  at  the  window  ?  Why  are  four 
eyeless,  footless,  legless  horses,,  rapidly  circmnscribed  by  breeching 
and  beai'ing-reins  ?  Why  are  you  whisked  off,  amid  the  smiles  of 
sallow  waiters,  before  the  landlord  has  had  time  to  communicate  to 
you  the  sad  state  of  turnips  in  the  neighbourhood  ?  Look  now  a 
little  to  the  right  as  you  proceed  down  the  main  street,  and  you 
will  behold  the  sign  of  the  Star  and  Garter.     Make  your  bow  to 

♦From  an  article  on  the  "Licensing  of  Ale-Houses."  —  Ed.  Rev.  Sep.,  1826 


180  WINE-DRINKERS   AND   ALE-DRINKERS. 

the  landlord,  for  to  liim  you  are  indebted  for  the  gratification  of 
your  wishes,  and  the  activity  of  your  movements.  His  waiters 
are  as  sallow,  his  vertebrae  are  as  flexible  —  his  first  turns  as 
prompt  and  decisive.  Woe  to  the  Dragon  if  he  slumbers  and 
sleeps  !  Woe  to  the  Star  if  it  does  not  glitter !  Each  publican 
keeps  the  other  in  a  state  of  vigilant  civility ;  and  the  traveller 
rolls  along  to  his  journey's  end,  lolling  on  the  cushion  of  com- 
petition !  Why  not  therefore  extend  the  benefit  of  this  principle 
to  the  poor  villager  or  the  needy  traveller  —  which  produces  so 
many  comforts  to  the  landed  and  substantial  Justice  ? 

There  are  two  alehouses  in  the  village,  the  Red  Horse  and  the 
Dun  Cow.  Is  it  common  sense  to  suppose  that  these  two  publi- 
cans are  not  desirous  of  gaining  customers  from  each  other  ?  — 
and  that  the  means  they  take  are  not  precisely  the  same  as  those 
of  important  inns  —  by  pi'ocuring  good  articles,  and  retailing  them 
with  civility  and  attention  ?  We  really  do  not  mean  to  accuse 
English  magistrates  of  ill  nature,  for  in  general  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  kindness  and  consideration  among  them ;  but  they  do  not 
drink  ale,  and  are  apt  to  forget  the  importance  of  ale  to  the  com- 
mon people.  When  wine-drinkers  regulate  the  liquor  and  comfort 
of  ale-drinkers,  it  is  much  as  if  carnivorous  animals  should  regu- 
late the  food  of  graminivorous  animals  —  as  if  a  lion  should  cater 
for  an  ox,  or  a  coach-horse  order  dinner  for  a  leopard.  There  is 
no  natural  capacity  or  incitement  to  do  the  thing  well  —  no  power 
in  the  lion  to  distinguish  between  clover  and  cow-thistles  —  no 
disposition  in  the  coach-horse  to  discriminate  between  the  succu- 
lence of  a  young  kid,  and  the  distressing  dryness  of  a  superannua- 
ted cow.  The  want  of  sympathy  is  a  source  of  mattention,  and  a 
cause  of  evil. 

The  immense  importance  of  a  pint  of  ale  to  a  common  person 
should  never  be  overlooked ;  nor  should  a  good-natured  Justice 
forget  that  he  is  acting  for  Liliputians,  whose  pains  and  pleasures 
lie  in  a  very  narrow  compass,  and  are  but  too  apt  to  be  treated 
with  neglect  and  contempt  by  their  superiors.  About  ten  or  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  perhaps,  the  first  faint,  shadowy  vision  of 
a  future  pint  of  beer  dawns  on  the  fancy  of  the  ploughman.  Far, 
very  far  is  it  from  being  fully  developed.  Sometimes  the  idea  is 
rejected,  sometimes  it  is  fostered.  At  one  time  he  is  almost  fixed 
on  the  Red  Horse ;  but  the  blazing  fire  and  sedulous  kindness  of 


THE   DUN  COW.  181 

the  landlady  of  the  Dun  Cow  shake  him,  and  his  soul  labours ! 
Heavj'  is  the  ploughed  land  —  dark,  dreary,  and  wet  the  day. 
His  purpose  is  at  last  fixed  for  beer  !  Threepence  is  put  down  for 
the  vigour  of  ale,  one  penny  for  the  stupefaction  of  tobacco  !  — and 
these  are  the  joys  and  hoUdays  of  millions,  the  greatest  pleasure 
and  relaxation  which  it  is  in  the  power  of  fortune  to  bestow ;  and 
these  are  the  amusements  and  holidays  which  a  wise  and  parental 
Legislature  should  not  despise  or  hastily  extinguish,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  protect  with  every  regulation  which  prudence  and  mor- 
ahty  would  in  any  degi'ee  permit.  We  must  beg  leave  to  go  into 
the  Dun  Cow  with  the  poor  man  ;  and  we  beg  our  readers  to  come 
in  for  a  moment  with  us.  Hodge  finds  a  very  good  fire,  a  very 
good-natured  landlady,  who  has  some  obliging  expressions  for  every- 
body, a  clean  bench,  and  some  very  good  ale — and  all  this  produ- 
ced by  the  competition  with  the  opposite  alehouse ;  but  for  which, 
he  must  have  put  up  with  any  treatment,  and  any  refreshment  the 
unopposed  landlord  might  have  chosen  to  place  before  him.  Is 
Hodge  not  sensible  that  his  landlady  is  obliging,  and  his  ale  good? 
How  can  it  be  supposed  that  the  common  people  have  not  the  same 
distinctions  and  niceties  in  their  homely  pleasures  as  the  upper 
classes  have  in  their  luxuries  ?  Why  should  they  not  have  ?  "Why 
should  they  not  be  indulged  in  it?  Why  should  they  be  debarred 
from  all  benefit  of  that  principle  of  competition,  which  i&  the  only 
method  by  which  such  advantages  are  secured,  or  can  ever  be 
secured,  to  any  class  of  mankind? — the  method  to  which  the 
upper  classes,  wherever  their  own  pleasures  are  concerned,  always 
have  recoui'se.  The  licensers  of  public-houses  are  so  sensible  of 
this,  that,  where  there  is  only  one  inn,  nothing  is  more  common 
than  to  substitute,  and  make  exertions  to  set  up  another,  and  this 
by  gentlemen  who  are  by  no  means  friendly  to  the  multiplication 

of  alehouses 

Public-houses  are  not  only  the  inns  of  the  travelling  pooi',  but 
they  are  the  cellars  and  parlours  of  the  stationary  poor.  A  gen- 
tleman has  his  own  public-house,  locked  up  in  a  square  brick  bin, 
London  Particular —  Chalier  1802 —  Carbonell  1803  —  Sir  John's 
present  of  Hock  at  my  marriage :  bought  at  the  Duke's  sale  —  East 
India  Madeira  —  Lajitte  —  Noyau  —  Mareschino.  Such  are  the 
domestic  resources  of  him  who  is  to  regulate  the  potations  of  the 
labourer.     And  away  goes  this  subterraneous  bacchanahan,  greedy 


182  PEIVATE   CELLARS   AND   PUBLIC-HOUSES. 

of  the  grape,  with  his  feet  wrapped  up  in  flannel,  to  increase,  on 
the  Hcensing  (lav,  the  difficulties  of  obtaining  a  pot  of  beer  to  the 
lower  orders  of  mankind !  —  and  believes,  as  all  men  do  when 
they  are  deciding  upon  other  persons'  pleasures,  that  he  is  actu- 
ated by  the  highest  sense  of  duty,  and  the  deepest  consideration 

for  the  welfare  of  the  lower  orders.* 

In  an  advanced  state  of  civilization  there  must  be  also  an  ad- 
vanced state  of  misery.  In  the  low  public-houses  of  great  cities, 
very  wretched  and  very  criminal  persons  are  huddled  together  in 
great  masses.  But  is  a  man  to  die  supperless  in  a  ditch  because 
he  is  not  rich,  or  even  because  he  is  not  innocent  ?  A  pauper  or 
a  felon  is  not  to  be  di-iven  into  despair,  and  turned  into  a  wUd 
beast.  Such  men  must  be  ;  and  such  men  must  eat  and  sleep  ;  and 
if  laws  are  wise,  and  poUce  vigilant,  we  do  not  conceive  it  to  be  any 
evil  that  the  haunts  of  such  men  are  known,  and  in  some  degree 
subject  to  inspection.  What  is  meant  by  respectable  public-houses, 
are  houses  where  all  the  customers  are  rich  and  opulent.  But 
who  will  take  in  the  refuse  of  mankind,  if  monoi^oly  allows  him 
to  choose  better  customers  ?  There  is  no  end  to  this  mischievous 
meddling  with  the  natural  arrangements  of  society.  It  would  be 
just  as  wise  to  set  magistrates  to  digest  for  mankind,  as  to  fix  for 
them  in  what  proportion  any  particular  class  of  their  wants  shall 
be  supplied.  But  there  ai-e  excellent  men  who  would  place  the 
moon  under  the  care  of  magistrates,  in  order  to  improve  travel- 

*  In  an  article  on  Botany  Bay,  Ed.  Rev.,  July,  1819,  Sj-dncy  Smith  has 
this  parallel  passage  on  the  Consumption  of  Spirits  :  "  There  has  been  in  all 
governments  a  great  deal  of  absurd  canting  about  the  consumption  of  spirits. 
We  believe  the  best  plan  is  to  let  people  drink  what  they  like,  and  wear  what 
they  like ;  to  make  no  sumptuary  laws  either  for  the  belly  or  the  back.  In 
the  first  place  laws  against  rum  and  rum-water  are  made  by  men  who  change 
a  wet  coat  for  a  dry  one  whenever  they  choose,  and  who  do  not  often  work 
up  to  their  knees  in  mud  and  water ;  and,  in  the  next  place,  if  this  stimulus 
did  all  the  mischief  it  is  thought  to  do  by  the  wise  men  of  claret,  its  cheap- 
ness and  plenty  would  rather  lessen  than  increase  the  avidity  with  which  it  is 
at  present  sought  for.  Again,  human  life  is  subject  to  such  manifold  wretch- 
edness, that  all  nations  have  invented  a  something  liquid  and  solid,  to  produce 
a  brief  oblivion.  Poppies,  barley,  grasses,  sugar,  pepper,  and  a  thousand 
other  things,  have  been  squeezed,  pressed,  pounded  and  purified  to  produce 
this  temporary  happiness.  Noblemen  and  members  of  Parliament  have  large 
cellars  full  of  sealed  bottles,  to  enable  them  the  better  to  endure  the  wretched- 
ness of  life.  The  poor  man  seeks  the  same  end  by  expending  three  half 
pence  in  gin ;  — but  no  moralist  can  endure  the  idea  of  gin." 


GHOSTS.  188 

ling,  and  make  things  safe  and  comfortable.  An  enhancement  of 
the  evil  is,  that  no  reason  is  given  for  the  rejection  or  adoption. 
The  Magistrates  have  only  to  preserve  the  most  impenetrable  se- 
crecy— to  say  only  No,  or  Yes,  and  the  affair  is  at  an'  end.  No 
court  can  interfere,  no  superior  authority  question.  Hunger  and 
thirst,  or  wantonness  and  riot,  are  inflicted  upon  a  parish  or  a  dis- 
trict for  a  whole  year,  without  the  possibility  of  complaint,  or  the 
hope  of  redress.  Their  Worships  were  in  the  gout,  and  they  re- 
fused. Their  "Worships  were  mellow,  and  they  gave  leave.  God 
bless  theii-  Worships! — and  then,  what  would  happen  if  small 
public-houses  were  shut  ?  Would  villany  cease  ?  Are  there  no 
other  means  by  which  the  bad  could  congregate  ?  Is  there  so  fool- 
ish a  person,  either  in  or  out  of  the  Commission,  as  to  believe  that 
burglary  and  larceny  would  be  put  an  end  to,  by  the  want  of  a 
place  m  which  the  plan  for  such  deeds  could  be  talked  over  and 
arranged  ? 


NO-POPERT   OUTCRY   OF    1827.* 

Few  men  consider  the  historical  view  which  will  be  taken  of 
present  events.  The  bubbles  of  last  year ;  the  fishing  for  half- 
crowns  in  Vigo  Bay ;  the  Milk  JMufRn  and  Crumpet  Companies ; 
the  Apple,  Pear  and  Plum  Associations ;  the  National  Gooseberry 
and  Current  Company;  will  all  be  remembered  as  instances  of 
that  partial  madness  to  which  society  is  occasionally  exposed. 
What  will  be  said  of  all  the  intolei'able  trash  which  is  issued  forth 
at  pubhc  meetings  of  No  Popery  ?  The  follies  of  one  century  are 
scarcely  credible  in  that  which  succeeds  it.  A  grandmamma  of 
1827  is  as  wise  as  a  very  wise  man  of  1727,  If  the  world  lasts 
till  1927,  the  grandmammas  of  that  period  will  be  far  wiser  than 
the  tip-top  No-Popery  men  of  this  day.  That  this  childish  non- 
sense will  have  got  out  of  the  drawing-room,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  It  will  most  probably  have  passed  through  the  steward's 
room  —  and  butler's  pantry,  into  the  kitchen.  This  is  the  case 
with  ghosts.  They  no  longer  loll  on  couches  and  sip  tea ;  but  are 
down  on  their  knees  scrubbing  with  the  scullion  —  or  stand  sweat- 
ing, and  basting  with  the  cook.  Mrs.  Abigail  turns  up  her  nose 
at  them,  and  the  housekeeper  declares  for  flesh  and  blood,  and  will 

have  none  of  their  company 

*  Article  "  Catholics,"  Ed.  Rev.,  1827. 


184  AMEEICA. 

We  conclude  witli  a  few  words  of  advice  to  the  different  oppo*^ 
nents  of  the  CathoUc  Question. 

To  the  No-Popery  fool. 

You  are  made  use  of  by  men  who  laugh  at  you,  and  despise 

you  for  your  folly  and  ignorance ;    and  who,  the  moment  it  suits 

their  purpose,  will  consent  to  emancipation  of  the  Catholics,  and 

leave  you  to  roar  and  bellow  No-Popery  !  to  vacancy  and  the  moon. 

To  the  No-Popery  rogue. 

A  shameful  and  scandalous  game,  to  sport  with  the  serious  in- 
terests of  the  country,  in  order  to  gain  some  increase  of  public 
power ! 

To  the  honest  No-Popery  people. 

We  respect  you  very  sincerely — but  are  astonished  at  your 
existence. 

To  the  base. 

Sweet  children  of  turpitude,  beware  !  the  old  anti-popery  peo- 
ple are  fast  perishing  away.  Take  heed  that  you  are  not  surprised 
by  an  emancipating  king  or  an  emancipating  administration.  Leave 
a  locus  pcenitentice  ! — prepare  a  place  for  retreat — get  ready  your 
equivocations  and  denials.  The  di-eadful  day  may  yet  come  when 
liberality  may  lead  to  place  and  power.  We  understand  these  mat- 
ters here.  It  is  the  safest  to  be  moderately  base — to  be  flexible  in 
shame,  and  to  be  always  ready  for  what  is  generous,  good,  and  just, 
when  anything  is  to  be  gained  by  virtue. 

To  the  Catholics. 
Wait.     Do  not  add  to  your  miseries .  by  a  mad  and  desperate 
rebellion.     Persevere  in  civil  exertions,  and  concede  all  you  can 
concede.     All  great  alterations  in  human  affairs  are  produced  by 
compromise. 


AJMEKICA. 

CHEAPNESS  OP  GOVERNMENT — UNIVERSAL  SUFFRAGE — CAUCUS.* 

One  of  the  great  advantages  of  the  American  government  is  its 
cheapness.     The  American  king  has  about  five  thousand  pounds 

*  This  and  the  following  passages  are  from  the  article  "America,"  Ed 
Rev.,  Dec,  1818. 


CAUCUS.  185 

(Sterling  per  annum,  tlie  vice-king  one  thousand  pounds  sterling. 
They  hire  their  Lord  Liverpool  at  ahout  a  thousand  per  annum, 
and  their  Lord  Sidmouth  (a  good  bargain)  at  the  same  sum.  Their 
Mr.  Crokers  are  inexpressibly  reasonable  —  somewhere  about  the 
price  of  an  English  doorkeeper,  or  bearer  of  a  mace.  Life,  how- 
ever, seems  to  go  on  very  well,  in  spite  of  these  low  salaries,  and  the 
purposes  of  government  to  be  veiy  fairly  answered.  Wliatever 
may  be  the  evils  of  universal  suffrage  in  other  countries,  they 
have  not  yet  been  felt  in  America ;  and  one  thing  at  least  is  estab- 
lished by  her  experience,  that  this  institution  is  not  necessarily 
followed  by  those  tumults,  the  dread  of  which  excites  so  much 
apprehension  in  this  country.  In  the  most  democratic  states, 
where  the  payment  of  direct  taxes  is  the  only  qualification  of  a 
voter,  the  elections  are  carried  on  with  the  utmost  tranquillity ; 
and  the  whole  business,  by  taking  votes  in  each  parish  or  section, 
concluded  aU  over  the  state  in  a  single  day.  A  great  deal  is  said 
by  Fearon*  about  Caucus,  the  cant  word  of  the  Americans  for  the 
committees  and  party  meetings  in  which  the  business  of  the  elec- 
tions is  prepared — the  influence  of  which  he  seems  to  consider  as 
prejudicial.  To  us,  however,  it  appears  to  be  nothing  more  than 
the  natural,  fair,  and  unavoidable  influence  which  talent,  popularity 
and  activity  always  must  have  upon  such  occasions.  What  other 
influence  can  the  leading  characters  of  the  democratic  party  in 
Congress  possibly  possess  ?  Bribery  is  entirely  out  of  the  ques- 
tion—  equally  so  is  the  influence  of  family  and  fortune.  What, 
then,  can  they  do,  with  their  caucus  or  without  it,  but  recommend  ? 
And  what  charge  is  it  against  the  American  government  to  say, 
that  those  members  of  whom  the  people  have  the  highest  opinion 
meet  together  to  consult  whom  they  sliall  recommend  for  president, 
and  that  their  recommendation  is  successful  in  their  diflferent 
states  ?  Could  any  friend  to  good  order  wish  other  means  to  be 
employed,  or  other  results  to  follow  ?  No  statesman  can  wish  to 
exclude  influence,  but  only  bad  influence ;  not  the  influence  of 
sense  and  character,  but  the  influence  of  money  and  punch. 

*  Henry  Bradshaw  Fearon,  wlio  came  to  America  in  1817,  to  report  on  the 
prospect  for  emigrants  from  England.  He  published  "A  Narrative  of  a 
Journey  of  Five  Tho  ;sind  Miles  through  the  Eastern  and  Western  States  of 
America." 


186  COURT  OF  CHANCERY. 

THE  JUDGE,  THE  TAILOR,  AND  THE  BARBEB. 

The  Americans,  we  believe,  are  the  first  persons  who  have  dis- 
carded the  tailor  in  the  administration  of  justice,  and  his  auxiliary 
the  barber — two  persons  of  endless  importance  in  the  codes  and 
pandects  of  Europe.  A  judge  administers  justice,  without  a  calorific 
wig  and  particoloured  gown,  in  a  coat  and  pantaloons.  He  is 
obeyed,  however ;  and  Ufe  and  property  are  not  badly  protected  iu 
the  United  States.  We  shall  be  denounced  by  the  laureate  as 
atheists  and  jacobins ;  but  we  must  say,  that  we  have  doubts 
whether  one  atom  of  useful  influence  is  added  to  men  in  impor- 
tant situations  by  any  colour,  quantity,  or  configuration  of  cloth 
and  hair.  The  true  progress  of  r-efinement,  we  conceive,  is  to  dis- 
card all  the  mountebank  drapery  of  barbarous  ages.  One  row  of 
gold  and  fur  falls  off  after  another  from  the  robe  of  power,  and  is 
picked  up  and  worn  by  the  parish  beadle  and  the  exhibitor  of  wild 
beasts.  Meantime,  the  afflicted  wiseacre  mourns  over  equality  of 
garment ;  and  wotteth  not  of  two  men,  whose  doublets  have  cost 
alike,  how  one  shall  command  and  the  other  obey. 


CHEAPNESS    OF   LAW. 

The  dress  of  lawyers,  however,  is,  at  all  events,  of  less  impor- 
tance than  their  charges.  Law  is  cheap  in  America  :  in  England, 
it  is  better,  in  a  mere  pecuniary  point  of  view,  to  give  up  forty 
pounds  than  to  contend  for  it  in  a  court  of  common  law.  It  costs 
that  sum  in  England  to  win  a  cause  ;  and,  in  the  court  of  equity,  it  is 
better  to  abandon  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  pounds,  than  to  con- 
tend for  it.  We  mean  to  say  nothing  disrespectful  of  the  Chancel- 
lor— who  is  an  upright  judge,  a  very  great  lawyer,  and  zealous  to 
do  all  he  can ;  but  we  beheve  the  Court  of  Chancery  to  be  in  a 
state  which  imperiously  requires  legislative  correction.  We  do  not 
accuse  it  of  any  malversation,  but  of  a  complication,  formality,  en- 
tanglement, and  delay,  which  the  Hfe,  the  wealth,  and  the  patience 
of  man  cannot  endure.  How  such  a  subject  comes  not  to  have 
been  taken  up  in  the  House  of  Commons,  we  are  wholly  at  a  loss 
to  conceive.  We  feel  for  climbing  boys  as  much  as  anybody  can 
do ;  but  what  is  a  climbing  boy  in  a  chimney  to  a  full-grown  suitor 
in  the  Master's  office.  And  whence  comes  it,  in  the  midst  of  ten 
thousand  compissions  and  charities,  that  no  Wilberforce,  or  Sister 


TAXES.  187 

Fry,  has  started xp  for  the  suitors  in  Chancery?  and  why,  in  the 
name  of  these  afflicted  and  attorney-worn  people,  are  there  united 
in  their  judge  three  or  four  offices,  any  one  of  which  is  sufficient 
to  occupy  the  whole  time  of  a  very  able  and  active  man. 


LITERATURE. 

Literature  the  Americans  have  none — no  native  Kterature, 
we  mean.  It  is  all  imported.  They  had  a  Franklin,  indeed  ;  and 
may  affiard  to  live  for  half  a  century  on  his  fame.  There  is,  or 
was,  a  Mr.  Dwight,  who  wrote  some  poems ;  and  his  baptismal 
name  was  Timothy.  There  is  also  a  small  account  of  Virginia,  by 
Jeffiirson,  and  an  epic  by  Joel  Barlow ;  and  some  pieces  of  pleas- 
antry by  Mr.  Irving.  But  why  should  the  Americans  write 
books,  when  a  six  weeks'  passage  brings  them,  in  their  own  tongue, 
om'  sense,  science,  and  genius,  in  bales  and  hogsheads  ?  Prairies, 
steamboats,  grist-mills,  are  their  natural  objects  for  centuries  to 
come.  Then,  when  they  have  got  to  the  Pacific  Ocean — epic 
poems,  plays,  pleasures  of  memory,  and  all  the  elegant  gratifica- 
tions of  an  ancient  people,  who  have  tamed  the  wild  eai'th,  and  set 
down  to  amuse  themselves. — This  is  the  natural  march  of  human 
affairs. 


military  glory  and  taxes.* 

David  Porter  and  Stephen  Decatur  are  very  brave  men ;  but 
they  will  prove  an  unspeakable  misfortune  to  their  country,  if  they 
inflame  Jonathan  into  a  love  of  naval  glory,  and  inspire  him  with 
any  other  love  of  war  than  that  which  is  founded  upon  a  deter- 
mination not  to  submit  to  serious  insult  and  injury. 

We  can  inform  Jonathan  what  are  the  inevitable  consequences 
of  being  too  fond  of  glory: — Taxes  upon  every  article  ivhich  en- 
ters into  the  mouth,  or  covers  the  bach,  or  is  placed  under  the  foot — 
taxes  upon  everything  which  it  is  pleasant  to  see,  hear,  feel,  smell, 
or  taste  —  taxes  tipon  warmth,  light,  and  locomotion  —  taxes  on 
everything  on  earth,  and  the  waters  under  the  earth — on  everything 
that  comes  from  abroad,  or  is  grown  at  home  —  taxes  on  the  raw 
mater kd — taxes  on  every  fresh  value  that  is  added  to  it  by  the  in- 

*  This  and  the  follon-ing  passages  are  from  the  article  "America."  Ed. 
Kcv.,  Jan.,  1820. 


188  THE  LAND   OP  JONATHAN. 

dustry  of  man  —  taxes  on  the  sauce  which  pampers  man^s  appetite^ 
and  the  drug  that  restores  him  to  health — on  the  ermine  which 
decorates  the  judge,  and  the  rope  which  hangs  the  criminal — on 
the  poor  man^s  salt,  and  the  rich  man^s  spice  —  on  the  brass  nails 
of  the  coffin,  and  the  ribbons  of  the  bride  —  at  bed  or  hoard,  couch- 
ant  or  levant,  toe  must  pay.  —  The  school-boy  whips  his  taxed  top 
—  the  beardless  youth  manages  his  taxed  horse,  with  a  taxed  bridle, 
on  a  taxed  road:  —  and  the  dying  Englishman,  pouring  his  medi- 
cine, which  has  paid  7  per  cent.,  into  a  spoon  that  has  paid  15  per 
cent.,  flings  himself  back  upon  his  chintz  bed.  which  has  paid  22 
per  cent.,  and  expires  in  the  arms  of  an  apothecary,  who  has  paid 
a  license  of  a  hundred  j)ounds  for  the  privilege  of  putting  him  to 
death.  His  whole  property  is  then  immediately  taxed  from  2  /o  10 
per  cent.  Besides  the  probate,  large  fees  are  demanded  for  bury- 
ing him,  in  the  chancel;  his  virtues  are  handed  down  to  posterity 
on  taxed  marble  ;  and  he  is  then  gathered  to  his  fathers,  to  be  taxed 
no  more.  In  addition  to  all  this,  the  habit  of  dealing  with  large 
sums  will  make  the  government  avaricious  and  profuse ;  and  the 
system  itself  will  uifallibly  generate  the  base  vermin  of  spies  and 
informers,  and  a  still  more  pestilent  race  of  political  tools  and  re- 
tainers of  the  meanest  and  most  odious  description; — while  the 
prodigious  patronage  which  the  collecting  of  this  splendid  revenue 
will  throw  into  the  hands  of  government,  wiU  invest  it  with  so  vast 
an  influence,  and  hold  out  such  means  and  temptations  to  corrup- 
tion, as  all  the  virtue  and  public  spirit,  even  of  republicans,  will 
be  unable  to  resist. 


WHO   READS   AN   AMERICAN   BOOK 


?* 


Such  is  the  land  of  Jonathan — and  thus  has  it  been  governed. 
In  his  honest  endeavours  to  better  his  situation,  and  in  his  manly 
purpose  of  resisting  injury  and  insult  we  most  cordially  sjonpa- 
thize.  We  hope  he  will  always  continue  to  watch  and  suspect  his 
government  as  he  now  does — remembering  that  it  is  the  constant 

*  This  is  the  famous  passage  which  has  been  the  peg  to  hang  many  weari- 
some dissertations  upon.  Not  needed  to  excite  rapid  American  invention,  it 
has  bccora'e  simply  an  historical  landmark,  from  which  to  date  extensive  na- 
tional achievements.  Its  questions  in  politics,  art,  science,  literature,  arc  an 
index  to  American  triumphs. 


RETROSPECT.  189 

tendency  of  those  intrusted  with  power,  to  conceive  that  they  en- 
joy it  by  their  own  merits,  and  for  their  own  use,  and  not  by  dele- 
gation, and  for  the  benefit  of  others.  Thus  far  we  are  the  friends 
and  admirers  of  Jonathan.  But  he  must  not  grow  vain  and  am- 
bitious ;  or  allow  himself  to  be  dazzled  by  that  galaxy  of  epithets 
by  which  his  orators  and  newspaper  scribblers  endeavour  to  per- 
suade their  supporters  that  they  are  the  greatest,  the  most  refined, 
the  most  enhghtened  and  most  moral  people  upon  earth.  The 
effect  of  this  is  unspeakably  ludicrous  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
— and,  even  on  the  other,  we  shall  imagine,  must  be  rather  humili- 
ating to  the  reasonable  part  of  the  population.  The  Americans  are 
a  brave,  industrious,  and  acute  people ;  but  they  have,  hitherto, 
given  no  indications  of  genius,  and  made  no  approaches  to  the 
heroic,  either  in  their  morality  or  character.  They  are  but  a  re- 
cent offset,  indeed,  from  England ;  and  should  make  it  their  chief 
boast,  for  many  generations  to  come,  that  they  are  sprung  from  the 
same  race  with  Bacon  and  Shakespeare  and  Newton.  Considering 
their  numbers,  indeed,  and  the  favourable  circumstances  in  which 
they  have  been  placed,  they  have  yet  done  marvellously  little  to 
assert  the  honour  of  such  a  descent,  or  to  show  that  their  English 
blood  has  been  exalted  or  refined  by  their  republican  training  and 
institutions.  Their  Franklins  and  "Washingtons,  and  all  the  other 
sages  and  heroes  of  their  Revolution,  were  born  and  bred  subjects 
of  the  King  of  England  —  and  not  among  the  freest  or  most  valued 
of  his  subjects.  And  since  the  period  of  their  separation,  a  far 
greater  proportion  of  their  statesmen  and  artists  and  political  wri- 
ters have  been  foreigners  than  ever  occurred  before  in  the  history 
of  any  civilized  and  educated  people.  During  the  thirty  or  forty 
years  of  their  independence,  they  have  done  absolutely  nothing  for 
the  Sciences,  for  the  Arts,  for  Literature,  or  even  for  the  states- 
man-like studies  of  Politics  or  Political  Economy.  Confining  our- 
selves to  our  own  country,  and  to  the  period  that  has  elapsed  since 
they  had  an  independent  existence,  we  would  ask,  where  are  their 
Foxes,  their  Burkes,  their  Sheridans,  their  "Windhams,  their  Hor- 
ners,  their  Wilberforces  ? — Where  their  Arkwrighfes,  their  "Watts, 
their  Davys? — their  Robertsons,  Blairs,  Smiths,  Stewarts,  Paleys, 
and  Makhuses  ? — their  Persons,  Parrs,  Burneys,  or  Blomfields? 
— their  Scotts,  Rogerses,  Campbells,  Byrons,  Moores,  or  Crabbes? 
— their  Siddonses,  Kembles,  Keans,  orO'Neils?  —  their  "VVilkies, 


190  WHO  READS  AN  AMERICAN  BOOK? 

Lawrences,  Chantrys? — or  their  parallels  to  the  hundred  other 
names  that  have  spread  themselves  over  the  world  from  our  little 
island  in  the  course  of  the  last  thirty  years,  and  blest  or  delighted 
mankind  by  their  works,  inventions,  or  examples  ?  In  so  far  as 
we  know,  there  is  no  such  parallel  to  be  produced  from  the  whole 
annals  of  this  self-adulating  race.  In  the  four  quarters  of  the 
globe,  who  reads  an  American  book  ?  or  goes  to  an  American  play  ? 
or  looks  at  an  American  picture  or  statue  ?  What  does  the  world 
yet  owe  to  American  physicians  or  surgeons  ?  What  new  sub- 
stances have  their  chemists  discovered  ?  or  what  old  ones  have  thej 
analyzed  ?  What  new  constellations  have  been  discovered  by  the 
telescopes  of  Americans  ?  What  have  they  done  in  the  mathemat- 
ics ?  Who  drinks  out  of  American  glasses  ?  or  eats  from  American 
plates  ?  or  wears  Amei'ican  coats  or  gowns  ?  or  sleeps  in  American 
blankets  ?  Finally,  under  which  of  the  old  tyrannical  governments 
of  Europe  is  every  sixth  man  a  slave,  whom  his  fellow-creatures 
may  buy  and  sell  and  torture  ? 

When  these  questions  are  fairly  and  favourably  answered,  their 
laudatory  epithets  may  be  allowed :  but  tiU  that  can  be  done,  we 
would  seriously  advise  them  to  keep  clear  of  superlatives. 


RELIGIOUS   LIBERTY.* 

There  is  a  set  of  miserable  persons  in  England,  who  are  dread- 
fully afraid  of  America  and  everything  American  —  whose  great 
delight  is  to  see  that  country  ridiculed  and  viliiied — and  who 
appear  to  imagine  that  aU  the  abuses  which  exist  in  this  country 
acquire  additional  vigour  and  chance  of  duration  from  every  book 
of  travels  which  pours  forth  its  venom  and  falsehood  on  the  United 
States.  We  shaU  fi-om  time  to  time  call  the  attention  of  the  public 
to  this  subject,  not  from  any  party  spirit,  but  because  we  love 
truth,  and  praise  excellence  wherever  we  find  it ;  and  because 
we  think  the  example  of  America  will  in  many  instances  tend  to 
open  the  eyes  of  Erglishmen  to  their  true  interests. 

The  economy  of  America  is  a  great  and  important  object  for 
our  imitation.  The  salary  of  Mr.  Bagot,  our  late  embassador,  was, 
we  believe,  rather  higher  than  that  of  the  President  of  the  United 

*  This  and  the  following  passages  are  from  the  article  "Ainerica."-Ed.  Eev. 
July  1824. 


RELIGIOUS   LIBERTY.  191 

States.  Tlie  vice-president  receives  rather  less  than  the  second 
clerk  of  the  House  of  Commons ;  and  all  salaries,  civil  and  military, 
ai'e  upon  the  same  scale ;  and  yet  no  country  is  better  served  than 
America !  Mr.  Hume  has  at  last  persuaded  the  English  people 
to  look  a  httle  into  their  accounts,  and  to  see  how  sadly  they  are 
plundered.  But  we  ought  to  suspend  our  contempt  for  America, 
and  consider  whether  we  have  not  a  very  momentous  lesson  to 
learn  from  tlus  wise  and  cautious  people  on  the  subject  of  economy. 

A  lesson  upon  the  importance  of  religious  toleration,  we  are 
determined,  it  would  seem,  not  to  learn  —  either  from  America, 
or  from  any  other  quarter  of  the  globe.  The  High  Sheriff  of 
New  York,  last  year,  was  a  Jew.  *  It  was  with  the  utmost  difficulty 
that  a  bill  was  carried  this  year  to  allow  the  first  Duke  of  England 
to  carry  a  gold  stick  before  the  king — because  he  was  a  Catholic! 
■ — and  yet  we  thmk  ourselves  entitled  to  indulge  in  impertinent 
sneers  at  America — as  if  civilization  did  not  dejDend  more  upon 
making  wise  laws  for  the  pi'omotion  of  human  happiness,  than  in 
having  good  inns,  and  post-horses,  and  civil  waiters.  The  circum- 
stances of  the  Dissenters'  marriage  bill  are  such  as  would  excite 
the  contempt  of  a  Choctaw  or  Cherokee,  if  he  could  be  brought  to 
understand  them.  A  certain  class  of  Dissenters  beg  they  may  not 
be  compelled  to  say  that  they  marry  in  the  name  of  the  Trinity, 
because  they  do  not  beheve  in  the  Trinity.  Never  mind,  say  the 
corruptionists,  you  must  go  on  saying  you  marry  in  the  name  of 
the  Trinity,  whether  you  believe  in  it  or  not.  We  know  that  such 
a  protestation  from  you  wUl  be  false :  but,  unless  you  make  it,  your 
■wives  shall  be  concubines,  and  your  children  illegitimate.  Is  it 
possible  to  conceive  a  greater  or  more  useless  tyranny  than  this  ? 

In  fact,  it  is  hardly  possible  for  any  nation  to  show  a  greater 
superiority  over  another  than  the  Americans,  in  this  particular, 
have  done  over  this  country.  They  have  fairly  and  completely, 
and  probably  for  ever,  extinguished  that  spirit  of  religious  perse- 
cution which  has  been  the  employment  and  the  curse  of  mankind 
for  four  or  five  centuries ;  not  only  that  persecution  which  im- 
prisons and  scourges  for  religious  opinions,  but  the  tyi'anny  of 
incapacitation,  which,  by  disqualifying  from  civil  oflSces,  and  cutting 

*  The  late  M.  M.  Noah.  It  was  objected  to  his  election  that  a  Jew  would 
thus  come  to  have  the  hanging  of  Christians.  "  Pretty  Christians,"  replied 
Noah,  "  to  need  hanging !" 


192  POLITICAL   UNION. 

a  man  off  from  the  lawful  objects  of  ambition,  endeavours  to  strangle 
religious  freedom  in  silence,  and  to  enjoy  all  the  advantages,  with- 
out the  blood,  and  noise,  and  fire  of  j^ersecution.  What  passes  in 
the  mind  of  one  mean  blockhead  is  the  general  history  of  all  per- 
secution. "  This  man  pretends  to  know  better  than  me — I  cannot 
subdue  him  by  argument:  but  I  will  take  care  he  shall  never 
be  mayor  or  alderman  of  the  town  in  which  he  lives ;  I  will  never 
consent  to  the  repeal  of  the  test  act  or  to  Catholic  emancipation ; 
I  will  teach  the  fellow  to  differ  from  me  in  rehgious  opinions ! " 
So  says  the  Episcopalian  to  the  Catholic — and  so  the  CathoHc 
says  to  the  Protestant.  But  the  wisdom  of  America  keeps  them 
all  down  —  secures  to  them  all  their  just  rights — gives  to  each 
of  them  their  separate  pcAvs,  and  bells,  and  steeples  —  makes  them 
all  aldermen  in  their  turns  —  and  quietly  extinguishes  the  fagots 
which  each  is  preparing  for  the  combustion  of  the  other.  Nor  is 
this  indifference  to  religious  subjects  in  the  American  people,  but 
pure  civilization  —  a  thorough  comprehension  of  what  is  best  cal- 
culated to  secure  the  public  happiness  and  peace — and  a  determi- 
nation that  this  happiness  and  peace  shall  not  be  violated  by  the 
insolence  of  any  human  being,  in  the  garb,  and  under  the  sanction, 
of  religion.  In  this  particular,  the  Americans  are  at  the  head  of 
all  the  nations  of  the  world :  and  at  the  same  time  they  are,  espe- 
cially in  the  Eastern  and  Midland  States,  so  far  from  being  indiffer- 
ent on  subjects  of  religion,  that  they  may  be  most  justly  character- 
ized as  a  very  religious  people :  but  they  are  devout  without  being 
unjust  (the  great  problem  in  religion)  ;  a  higher  proof  of  civili- 
zation than  painted  tea-cups,  water-proof  leather,  or  broadcloth  at 
two  guineas  a  yard. 


AMERICAN   UNION. 

Though  America  is  a  confederation  of  republics,  they  are  in 
many  cases  much  more  amalgamated  than  the  various  parts  of 
Great  Britain.  If  a  citizen  of  the  United  States  can  make  a  shoe, 
he  is  at  hberty  to  make  a  shoe  anywhere  between  Lake  Ontario 
and  New  Orleans  —  he  may  sole  on  the  Mississippi — heel  on  the 
Missouri — measure  Mr.  Birkbeck  on  the  little  "Wabash,  or  take 
(which  our  best  politicians  do  not  find  an  easy  matter)  the  length 
of  Mr.  Monroe's  foot  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac.    But  wo  to  the 


LYNCH-LAW.  -  193 

cobbler,  ■who,  liaving  made  Hessian  boots  for  tlie  Alderman  of 
Newcastle,  should  venture  to  invest  with  these  coriaceous  integu- 
ments the  leg  of  a  liege  subject  at  York.  A  yellow  ant  in  a  nest 
of  red  ants  —  a  butcher's  dog  in  a  fox-kennel  —  a  mouse  in  a  bee- 
hive— all  feel  the  effects  of  untimely  intrusion; — but  far  prefer- 
able their  fate  to  that  of  the  misguided  artisan,  who,  misled  by  six- 
penny histoi'ies  of  England,  and  conceiving  his  country  to  have 
been  united  at  the  Heptarchy,  goes  forth  from  his  native  town  to 
stitch  freely  within  the  sea-girt  limits  of  Albion.  Him  the  mayor, 
him  the  alderman,  him  the  recorder,  him  the  quarter  sessions 
would  worry.  Him  the  justices  before  trial  would  long  to  get  into 
the  treadmill ;  and  would  much  lament  that,  by  a  recent  act,  they 
could  not  do  so,  even  with  the  intruding  tradesman's  consent ;  but 
the  moment  he  was  tried,  they  would  push  him  in  with  redoubled 
energy,  and  leave  him  to  tread  himself  into  a  conviction  of  the 
barbarous  institutions  of  his  corporation-divided  country. 


JUDGE   LYNCH. 

In  all  new  and  distant  settlements  the  forms  of  law  must,  of 
course,  be  very  limited.  No  justice's  warrant  is  current  in  the 
Dismal  Swamp ;  constables  are  exceedingly  puzzled  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  the  Mississippi ;  and  there  is  no  treadmill,  either  before 
or  after  trial,  on  the  Little  Wabash.  The  consequence  of  this  is, 
that  the  settlers  take  the  law  into  their  own  hands,  and  give  notice 
to  a  justice-proof  delinquent  to  quit  the  territory — if  this  notice  is 
disobeyed,  they  assemble  and  whip  the  culprit,  and  this  failing,  on 
the  second  visit  they  cut  off  his  ears.  In  short,  Captain  Rock  has 
his  descendants  in  America.  Mankind  cannot  live  together  with- 
out some  approximation  to  justice ;  and  if  the  actual  government 
wUl  not  govern  well,  or  cannot  govern  well,  is  too  wicked  or  too 
weak  to  do  so — then  men  prefer  Rock  to  anarchy. 


SUMMARY. 

America  seems,  on  the  whole,  to  be  a  country  possessmg  vast 
advantages,  and  little  inconveniences ;  they  have  a  cheap  govern-i 
ment,  and  bad  roads ;  they  pay  no  tithes,  and  have  stage-coaches 
without  springs.     They  have  no  poor  laws  and  no  monopolies — 

9 


194  SLAVERY- 

but  their  inns  are  inconvenient,  and  travellers  are  teased  with 
questions.  They  have  no  collections  in  the  fine  ai-ts ;  but  they 
have  no  lord-chancellor,  and  they  can  go  to  law  without  absolute 
ruin.  They  cannot  make  Latin  vez'ses,  but  they  expend  immense 
sums  in  the  education  of  the  poor.  In  all  this  the  balance  is  pro- 
digiously in  their  favour :  but  then  comes  the  great  disgrace  and 
danger  of  America — the  existence  of  slavery,  which  if  not  timous- 
ly  corrected,  will  one  day  entail  (and  ought  to  entail)  a  bloody 
servile  war  uj)on  the  Americans — which  will  separate  America 
into  slave  states  and  states  disclaiming  slavery,  and  which  remains 
at  present  as  the  foulest  blot  in  the  moral  character  of  that  people. 
A  high-spirited  nation,  who  cannot  endure  the  slightest  act  of 
foreign  aggression  and  who  revolt  at  the  very  shadow  of  domestic 
tyranny — beat  with  cart- whips  and  bind  with  chains,  and  mui'der 
for  the  merest  trifles,  wretched  human  beings  who  are  of  a  more 
dusky  colour  than  themselves ;  and  have  recently  admitted  into 
their  Union  a  new  State,  with  the  express  peraiission  of  ingraft- 
ing this  atrocious  wickedness  into  their  constitution !  No  one  can 
admire  the  simple  wisdom  and  manly  firmness  of  the  Americans 
more  than  we  do,  or  more  despise  the  pitiful  propensity  which 
exists  among  government-runners  to  vent  their  small  spite  at  their 
character ;  but  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  the  conduct  of  America 
is,  and  has  been,  most  reprehensible.  It  is  impossible  to  speak 
of  it  with  too  much  indignation  and  contempt ;  but  for  it,  we  should 
look  forward  with  unquahfied  pleasure  to  such  a  land  of  freedom, 
and  such  a  magnificent  spectacle  of  human  happiness.* 

*  Smith  previously  expressed  this  sentiment  in  a  letter  to  Jeffrey  (Foston 
iNov.  23,  1818),  who  appears  to  have  been  suspicious  of  his  friend's  levity  and 
satire  in  handlinji  the  Americans  in  the  Review :  —  "  My  dear  Jeffrey,  I  entirely 
agree  with  you  respecting  the  Americans,  and  believe  that  I  am  to  the  full 
as  much  a  Philo-Yankeeist  as  you  arc.  I  doubt  if  there  ever  was  an  instance 
of  a  new  people  conducting  their  affairs  with  so  much  wisdom,  or  if  there 
ever  was  such  an  extensive  scene  of  human  happiness  and  prosperity.  How- 
ever, you  could  not  know  that  such  were  my  opinions ;  or  if  you  did,  you 
might  imagine  I  should  sacrifice  them  to  effect ;  and  in  e:ther  case  your  cau- 
tion was  proper." 


FOOD   OP  THE  MIND.  195 


SKETCHES  OP  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY. 


SUPPLIES    FOR    THE    MIND.* 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  in  conducting  the  understanding  is 
precisely  the  same  as  in  conducting  the  body — to  give  it  regular 
and  copious  supplies  of  food,  to  prevent  that  atrophy  and  maras- 
mus of  mind,  which  comes  on  from  giving  it  no  new  ideas.  It  is 
a  mistake  equally  fatal  to  the  memory,  the  imagination,  the  powers 
of  reasoning,  and  to  every  faculty  of  the  mind,  to  think  too  eai-ly 
that  we  can  live  upon  our  stock  of  understanding — that  it  is  time 
to  leave  off  business,  and  make  use  of  the  acquisitions  we  have 
already  made,  without  troubling  ourselves  any  further  to  add  to 
them.  It  is  no  more  possible  for  an  idle  man  to  keejD  together  a 
certain  stock  of  knowledge,  than  it  is  possible  to  keep  together  a 
stock  of  ice  exposed  to  the  meridian  sun.  Every  day  destroys  a 
fact,  a  relation,  or  an  inference  ;  and  the  only  method  of  preserving 
the  bulk  and  value  of  the  pile  is  by  constantly  adding  to  it. 


LABOUR   AND    GENIUS. 

The  prevailing  idea  with  young  people  has  been,  the  incom- 
patibility of  labour  and  genius ;  and,  therefore,  from  the  fear  of 

*  From  the  Lecture  on  the  Conduct  of  the  Understanding,  Part  I,  This 
and  the  following  selections  embrace  nearly  the  whole  of  the  author's  two 
lectures  on  the  subject.  They  are  here  presented  in  paragraphs  for  conve- 
nience and  for  better  effect ;  the  passages  being,  in  fact,  short  essays  on  the 
separate  topics.  The  sequence  has  been  preserved,  though  little  importance 
was  attached  to  that  by  the  lecturer  who  commences  with  the  remark :  "  As 
the  general  object  of  my  lecture  will  be  to  guard  against  the  most  ordinary 
and  flagrant  errors  committed  in  the  conduct  of  the  understanding,  and  as  I 
see  no  use  in  preserving  any  order  in  their  enumeration,  I  shall  put  them 
down  only  in  the  order  in  which  they  happen  to  occur  to  mo." 


196  NO  EXCELLENCE  WITHOUT  LABOUR. 

being  thought  dull,  they  have  thought  it  necessary  to  remain  ignor- 
ant. I  have  seen,  at  school  and  at  college,  a  great  many  young 
men  completely  destroyed  by  having  been  so  z«ifortunate  as  to 
produce  an  excellent  copy  of  verses.  Their  genius  being  now 
established,  all  that  remained  for  them  to  do  was,  to  act  up  to  the 
dignity  of  the  character ;  and,  as  this  dignity  consisted  in  reading 
nothing  new,  in  forgetting  what  they  had  already  read,  and  in 
pretending  to  be  acquainted  with  all  subjects,  by  a  sort  of  off-hand 
exertion  of  talents,  they  soon  collapsed  into  the  most  frivolous  and 
insignificant  of  men.  "  When  we  have  had  continually  before  us," 
says  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  "  the  great  works  of  art,  to  impregnate 
our  minds  with  kindred  ideas,  we  are  then,  and  not  till  then,  fit  to 
produce  something  of  the  same  species.  We  behold  all  about  us 
with  the  eyes  of  those  penetrating  observers  whose  works  we  con- 
template ;  and  our  minds,  accustomed  to  thinh  the  thoughts  of  the 
noblest  and  brightest  intellects,  are  prepared  for  the  discovery  and 
selection  of  all  that  is  great  and  nol)le  in  nature.  The  greatest 
natural  genius  cannot  subsist  on  its  own  stock :  he  who  resolves 
never  to  ransack  any  mind  but  his  own,  will  be  soon  reduced  from 
mere  barrenness  to  the  poorest  of  all  imitations  ;  he  will  be  obliged 
to  imitate  himself,  and  to  repeat  what  he  has  before  repeated. 
When  we  know  the  subject  designed  by  such  men,  it  will  never  be 
difficult  to  guess  what  kind  of  work  is  to  be  produced."  There  is 
but  one  method,  and  that  is  hard  labour ;  and  a  man  who  will  not 
pay  that  price  for  distinction,  had  better  at  once  dedicate  himself 
to  the  pursuits  of  the  fox — or  sport  with  the  tangles  of  Nessra's 
hair — or  talk  of  bullocks,  and  glory  in  the  goad!  There  are 
many  modes  of  being  frivolous,  and  not  a  few  of  being  useful ; 
there  is  but  one  mode  of  being  intellectually  great. 

It  would  be  an  extremely  profitable  thing  to  draw  up  a  short 
and  well-authenticated  account  of  the  habits  of  study  of  the  most 
celebrated  writers  with  whose  style  of  literary  industry  we  happen 
to  be  most  acquainted.  It  would  go  vciy  far  to  destroy  the  absurd 
and  pernicious  association  of  genius  and  idleness,  by  shoAving  them 
that  the  greatest  poets,  orators,  statesmen,  and  historians — men 
of  the  most  brilliant  and  imposing  talents — have  actually  laboured 
as  hard  as  the  makers  of  dictionaries  and  the  arrangers  of  indexes  ; 
and  that  the  most  obvious  reason  why  they  have  been  superior  to 
other  men  is,  that  they  have  taken  more  pains  than  other  men. 


THE   BEST    COMPANY.  197 

Gibbon  was  in  his  study  every  morning,  -winter  and  pnmmcr.  at 
six  o'clock ;  Mr.  Burke  was  the  most  laborious  and  indefatigable 
of  human  beings ;  Leibnitz  was  never  out  of  his  library ;  Pascal 
killed  himself  by  study ;  Cicero  narrowly  escaped  death  by  the 
same  cause ;  Milton  was  at  his  books  with  as  much  regularity  as  a 
merchant  or  an  attorney — he  had  mastered  all  the  knowledge  of  his 
time  ;  so  had  Homer.  Raffaelle  lived  but  thirty-seven  years  ;  and 
in  that  short  space  carried  the  art  so  far  beyond  what  it  had  before 
reached,  that  he  appears  to  stand  alone  as  a  model  to  his  successors. 
There  are  instances  to  the  contraiy  ;  but,  generally  speaking,  the  life 
of  all  truly  great  men  has  been  a  life  of  intense  and  incessant  labour. 
They  have  commonly  passed  the  first  half  of  life  in  the  gross  dark- 
ness of  indigent  humility — overlooked,  mistaken,  contemned,  by 
weaker  men — thinking  while  others  slept,  reading  while  others 
rioted,  feeling  something  within  them  that  told  them  they  should 
not  always  be  kept  down  among  the  dregs  of  the  world  ;  and  then, 
when  their  time  was  come,  and  some  little  accident  has  given  them 
their  first  occasion,  they  have  burst  out  into  the  light  and  glory  of 
public  life,  rich  with  the  spoils  of  time,  and  mighty  in  all  the  la- 
bours and  struggles  of  the  mind.  Then  do  the  multitude  cry  out 
"  a  miracle  of  genius  !"  Yes,  he  is  a  miracle  of  genius,  because 
he  is  a  miracle  of  labour;  because,  instead  of  trusting  to  the 
resources  of  his  own  single  mind,  he  has  ransacked  a  thousand 
minds  ;  because  he  makes  use  of  the  accumulated  wisdom  of  ages, 
and  takes  as  his  point  of  departure  the  very  last  line  and  boundary 
to  which  science  has  advanced;  because  it  has  ever  been  the 
object  of  his  life  to  assist  every  intellectual  gift  of  nature,  however 
munificent,  and  however  splendid,  with  every  resource  that  art 
could  suggest,  and  every  attention  diligence  could  bestow. 


AFFECTATIONS    OF    KNOWLEDGE. 

If  we  are  to  read,  it  is  a  very  important  rule  in  the  conduct 
of  the  understanding,  that  we  should  accustom  the  mind  to  keep 
the  best  company,  by  introducing  it  only  to  the  best  books. 
But  there  is  a  sort  of  vanity  some  men  have,  of  talking  of,  and 
reading,  obscure  half-forgotten  authors,  because  it  passes  as  a 
matter  of  course,  that  he  who  quotes  authors  which  are  so  little 
read,  must  be  completely  and  thoroughly  acquainted  with  those 


198  LITERARY   ^OPPERY. 

authors  which  are  in  every  man's  mouth.  For  instance,  it  is  very 
common  to  quote  Shakespeare ;  but  it  makes  a  sort  of  stare  to 
quote  Massinger.  I  have  very  httle  credit  for  being  well  ac- 
quainted Avith  Virgil ;  but  if  I  quote  Silius  Italicus,  I  may  stand 
some  chance  of  being  reckoned  a  great  scholar.  In  short,  who- 
ever wishes  to  strike  out  of  the  great  road,  and  to  make  a  short 
cut  to  fame,  let  him  neglect  Homer,  and  Virgil,  and  Horace,  and 
Ariosto,  and  Milton,  and,  instead  of  these,  read  and  talk  of  Fracas- 
torius,  Sannazarius,  Lorenzini,  Pastorini,  and  the  thirty-six  primary 
sonneteers  of  Bettinelli ;  let  him  neglect  everything  which  the 
suffrage  of  ages  has  made  venerable  and  gi-and,  and  dig  out  of 
their  graves  a  set  of  decayed  scribblers,  whom  the  silent  verdict 
of  the  public  has  fau-ly  condemned  to  everlasting  oblivion.  If  he 
com^^lain  of  the  injustice  with  wliich  they  have  been  treated,  and 
call  for  a  new  trial  with  loud  and  importunate  clamour,  though  I 
am  afraid  he  will  not  make  much  progress  in  the  estimation  of  men 
of  sense,  he  Avill  be  sure  to  make  some  noise  in  the  crowd,  and  to 
be  dubbed  a  man  of  very  curious  and  extraordinary  erudition. 

Then  there  is  another  piece  of  foppery  which  is  to  be  cautiously 
guarded  against — the  foppery  of  universality — of  knowing  all 
sciences  and  excelling  in  all  arts  —  chemistry,  mathematics,  algebra, 
dancing,  history,  reasoning,  riding,  fencing,  Low  Dutch,  High 
Dutch,  natural  philosophy,  and  enough  Spanish  to  talk  about  Lope 
de  Vega :  in  short,  the  modern  precept  of  education  very  often  is, 
"  Take  the  Admirable  Crichton  for  your  model ;  I  would  have  you 
ignorant  of  nothing !"  Now  my  advice,  on  the  contrary,  is,  to 
have  the  courage  to  be  ignorant  of  a  great  number  of  things,  in 
order  to  avoid  the  calamity  of  being  ignorant  of  everything.  I 
would  exact  of  a  young  man  a  pledge  that  he  would  never  i-ead 
Lope  de  Vega;  he  should  pawn  to  me  his  honour  to  abstain  from 
Bettinelli,  and  his  thirty-five  original  sonneteers ;  and  I  would 
exact  from  him  the  most  rigid  securities  that  I  was  never  to  hear 
anything  about  that  race  of  penny  poets  who  lived  in  the  reigns 
of  Cosmo  and  Lorenzo  di  Medici. 

I  know  a  gentleman  of  the  law  who  has  a  thorough  knowledge 
of  fortifications,  and  whose  acquaintance  with  bastions,  and  coun- 
terscarps, and  parallels,  is  perfectly  astonishing.  How  impossible 
it  is  for  any  man  not  professionally  engaged  in  such  pursuits  to 
evince  a  thorough  acquaintance  with  them,  without  lowering  him- 


LOVE   OF  TRUTH.  199 

self  in  the  estimation  of  every  man  of  understanding  who  hears 
him  !  How  thoroughly  aware  must  all  such  men  be,  that  the  time 
dedicated  to  such  idle  knowledge  has  been  lost  to  the  perfection 
of  those  mental  habits,  any  one  of  which  is  better  than  the  most 

enormous  load  of  ill-arranged  facts  ! 

We  do  not  want  readers,  for  the  number  of  readers  seems  to  be 
very  much  upon  the  increase,  and  mere  readers  are  very  often  the 
most  idle  of  human  beings.  There  is  a  sort  of  feeling  of  getting 
tlirough  a  book — of  getting  enough  out  of  it,  perhaps,  for  the 
purpose  of  conversation  —  which  is  the  great  cause  of  this  imper- 
fect reading,  and  the  forgetfulness  which  is  the  consequence  of  it : 
whereas  the  ambition  of  a  man  of  parts  should  be,  not  to  know 
books,  but  things  ;  not  to  show  other  men  that  he  has  read  Locke, 
and  Montesquieu,  and  Beccaria,  and  Dumont,  but  to  show  them 
that  he  knows  the  subjects  on  which  Locke  and  Beccaria  and 
Dumont  have  written.  It  is  no  more  necessary  that  a  man  should 
remember  the  different  dinners  and  suppers  which  have  made  him 
healthy,  than  the  different  books  which  have  made  him  wise.  Let 
us  see  the  result  of  good  food  in  a  strong  body,  and  the  result  of 
great  reading  in  a  full  and  powerful  mind. 


ATTACHMEXT    TO    TRUTH. 

A  SINCERE  attachment  to  truth,  moral  and  scientific,  is  a  habit 
which  cures  a  thousand  little  infirmities  of  mind,  and  is  as  honour- 
able to  a  man  who  possesses  it,  in  point  of  character,  as  it  is  profit- 
able in  point  of  improvement.  There  is  nothing  more  beautiful  in 
science  than  to  hear  any  man  candidly  owning  his  ignorance.  It 
is  so  Uttle  the  habit  of  men  who  cultivate  knowledge  to  do  so — they 
so  often  have  recourse  to  subtei-fuge,  nonsense,  or  hypothesis,  rather 
than  to  a  plain,  manly  declaration,  either  that  they  themselves  do 
not  understand  the  subject,  or  that  the  subject  is  not  understood — 
that  it  is  really  quite  refreshing  to  witness  such  instances  of  philo- 
sophical candour,  and  it  creates  an  immediate  prepossession  in  fa- 
vour of  the  person  in  whom  it  is  observed. 


ABUSE    OF    WORDS. 

Next  to  this  we  have  the  abuse  of  words,  and  the  fallacy  of  as- 
sociations ;  compared  with  which  all  other  modes  of  misconducting 


200  USE   OF   WOEDS. 

the  understanding  are  insignificant  and  trivial.  What  do  you  mean 
by  what  you  say  ?  Ai-e  you  prepared  to  give  a  clear  account  of 
words  which  you  use  so  positively,  and  by  the  help  of  which  you 
form  opinions  that  you  seem  resolved  to  maintain  at  all  hazards  ? 
Perhaps  I  should  astonish  many  persons  by  putting  to  them  such 
sort  of  questions:  —  Do  you  know  what  is  meant  by  the  word 
nature  ?  Have  you  definite  notions  of  justice  ?  How  do  you 
explain  the  word  chance  ?  What  is  virtue  ?  Men  are  every  day 
framing  the  rashest  propositions  on  such  sort  of  subjects,  and  pre- 
pared to  kill  and  to  die  in  their  defence.  They  never,  for  a  smgle 
uistant,  doubt  of  the  meaning  of  that,  which  was  embarrassing  to 
Locke,  and  in  wliicli  Leibnitz  and  Descartes  were  never  able  to 
agree.  Ten  thousand  people  have  been  burned  before  now,  or 
hanged,  for  one  proposition.  The  proposition  had  no  meaning. 
Looked  into  and  examined  in  these  days,  it  is  absolute  nonsense. 
A  man  quits  his  country  in  disgust  at  some  supposed  violation  of 
its  liberties,  sells  liis  estates,  and  settles  in  America.  Twenty 
years  afterward,  it  occurs  to  him,  that  he  had  never  reflected  upon 
the  meaning  of  the  word ;  that  he  has  packed  up  his  goods  and 
changed  his  country  for  a  sound. 

Fortitude,  justice,  and  candour,  are  very  necessary  instruments 
of  happiness ;  but  they  require  time  and  exertion.  The  instru- 
ments I  am  now  proposing  to  you  you  must  not  despise — gram- 
mar, dejinition,  and  interpretation  —  instruments  which  overturn 
the  horrible  tyranny  of  adjectives  and  substantives,  and  free  the 
mind  from  the  chains  of  that  logocracy  in  which  it  is  so  frequently 
enslaved.  Now  have  the  goodness  to  observe  what  I  mean.  If 
you  choose  to  quarrel  with  your  eldest  son,  do  it ;  if  you  are  de- 
termined to  be  disgusted  with  the  world,  and  to  go  and  live  in 
Westmoreland,  do  so ;  if  you  are  resolved  to  quit  your  country, 
and  settle  in  America,  go!  —  only,  when  you  have  settled  the 
reasons  upon  which  you  take  one  or  the  other  of  these  steps,  have 
the  goodness  to  examine  whether  the  tvords  in  which  those  reasons 
are  contained  have  really  any  distinct  meaning ;  and  if  you  find 
they  have  not,  embrace  your  first-born,  forget  America,  unloose 
your  packages,  and  remain  where  you  are ! 

There  are  men  who  suffer  certain  barren  generalities  to  get  the 
better  of  their  understandings,  by  which  they  try  all  their  opinions, 
and  make  them  their  perpetual  standards  of  right  and  wrong:  as 


TIMIDITY.  201 

thus — Let  us  beware  oi'  novelty ;  The  excesses  of  the  people  are 
always  to  he  feared:  or  these  contrary  maxhns  —  that  there  is  a 
natural  tendency  in  all  governments  to  encx'oach  upon  the  liberties 
of  the  people ;  or  that  everytliing  modern  is  probably  an  improve- 
ment of  antiquity.  Now  what  can  the  use  be  of  sawing  about  a 
set  of  maxims  to  which  there  are  a  complete  set  of  antagonist 
maxims  ?  For  of  what  use  is  it  to  tell  me  that  governors  have  a 
tendency  to  encroach  upon  the  liberties  of  the  peojjle  ?  and  is  that 
a  reason  why  you  should  throw  yourself  systematically  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  government  ?  What  you  say  is  very  true ;  what  you 
do  is  very  foolish.  For  is  there  not  another  maxim  quite  as  true, 
that  the  excesses  of  the  people  are  to  be  guarded  against?  and 
does  not  one  evil  a  priori  require  your  attention  as  well  as  another  ? 
The  business  is,  to  determine,  at  any  one  particular  period  of  af- 
fairs, which  is  in  danger  of  being  weakened,  and  to  act  according- 
ly, like  an  honest  and  courageous  man ;  not  to  lie  hke  a  dead 
weight  at  one  end  of  the  beam,  without  the  smallest  recollection 
there  is  any  other,  and  that  the  equilibrium  will  be  violated  alike 
whichever,  extreme  shall  preponderate.  In  the  same  manner,  a 
thing  is  not  good  because  it  is  new,  or  good  because  it  is  old ; — ■ 
there  is  no  end  of  retorting  such  equally  true  princijiles :  but  it  is 
good  because  it  is  fit  for  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  intended,  and 
bad  because  it  is  not. 


COURAGE    IN    THE    USE    OF    TALENT. 

A  GREAT  deal  of  talent  is  lost  to  the  wo'rld  for  the  want  of 
a  little  courage.  Every  day  sends  to  their  graves  a  number  of 
obscui'e  men  who  have  only  remained  obscure  because  their  timid- 
ity has  prevented  them  from  making  a  fiyat  effort ;  and  who,  if 
they  could  only  have  been  induced  to  begin,  would  in  all  proba- 
bility have  gone  great  lengths  in  the  career  of  fame.  The  fact  is, 
that  in  order  to  do  anything  in  this  world  worth  doing,  we  must 
not  stand  shivering  on  the  bank,  and  tliinking  of  the  cold  and  the 
danger,  but  jump  in  and  scramble  through  as  well  as  we  can.  It 
will  not  do  to  be  perpetually  calculating  risks,  and  adjusting  nice 
chances :  it  did  all  very  well  before  the  Flood,  when  a  man  could 
consult  his  friends  upon  an  intended  publication  for  a  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  and  then  live  to  see  its  success  for  six  or  seven  centu- 

9* 


202  FASTIDIOUSNESS. 

ries  afterward ;  but  at  present  a  man  waits,  and  doubts,  and  hesi- 
tates, and  consults  his  brother,  and  his  uncle,  and  his  first  cousins, 
and  his  particular  friends,  till  one  fine  day  he  finds  that  he  is  sixty- 
five  years  of  age  —  that  he  has  lost  so  much  time  in  consulting  first 
cousins  and  particular  friends,  that  he  has  no  more  time  left  to 
follow  their  advice.  There  is  such  little  time  for  over-squeamish- 
ness  at  present,  the  opportunity  so  easily  slips  away,  the  very 
period  of  life  at  which  a  man  chooses  to  venture,  if  ever,  is  so  con- 
fined, that  it  is  no  bad  rule  to  preach  up  the  necessity,  in  such 
instances,  of  a  little  violence  done  to  the  feelings,  and  of  efforts 
made  in  defiance  of  strict  and  sober  calculation. 

"With  respect  to  that  fastidiousness  which  disturbs  the  right  con- 
duct of  the  understanding,  it  must  be  observed  that  there  are  two 
modes  of  judging  of  anything :  one,  by  the  test  of  what  has  actu- 
ally been  done  in  the  same  way  before  ;  the  other,  by  what  we  can 
conceive  may  be  done  in  that  way.  Now  this  latter  method  of 
mere  imaginary  excellence  can  hardly  be  a  just  criterion,  because 
it  may  be  in  fact  impossible  to  reduce  to  practice  what  it  is  per- 
fectly easy  to  conceive :  no  man,  before  he  has  tried,  can  tell  how 
difficult  it  is  to  manage  prejudice,  jealousy,  and  delicacy,  and  to 
overcome  aU  that  friction  wliich  the  world  opposes  to  speculation. 
Therefore,  the  fair  practical  rule  seems  to  be,  to  compare  any  ex- 
ertion, by  all  similar  exertions  which  have  preceded  it,  and  to  al- 
low merit  to  any  one  who  has  improved,  or,  at  least,  who  has  not 
deteriorated  the  standard  of  excellence,  in  his  own  department  of 
knowledge.  Fastidious  men  are  always  judging  by  the  other 
standard ;  and,  as  th?  rest  of  the  understanding  cannot  fill  up  in  a 
century  what  the  imagination  can  sketch  out  in  a  moment,  they 
are  always  in  a  state  of  perpetual  disappointment,  and  their  con- 
versation one  uniform- tenor  of  blame.  At  the  same  time  that  I  say 
this,  I  beg  leave  to  hft  up  both  my  hands  against  that  pernicious 
facility  of  temper,  in  the  estimation  of  which  everything  is  charming 
and  delightful.  Among  the  smaller  duties  of  life  I  hardly  know 
any  one  more  important  than  that  of  not  praising  where  praise  is 
not  due.  Reputation  is  one  of  the  prizes  for  which  men  contend : 
"  it  is,"  as  Mr.  Burke  calls  it,  "  the  cheap  defence  and  ornament  of 
nations,  and  the  nurse  of  manly  exertions ;"  it  j^roduces  more  la- 
bour and  more  talent  than  twice  the  wealth  of  a  country  could  ever 
rear  up.     It  is  thi>  coin  of  genius  ;  and  it  is  the  imperious  duty  of 


AEGUMENT.  203 

every  man  to  bestow  it  with  tlie  most  scrupulous  justice  and  the 
wisest  economy. 


HABIT    OF    DISCUSSION. 

I  AM  about  to  recommend  a  practice  in  the  conduct  of  the 
understanding  Avhich  I  dare  say  will  be  strongly  objected  to,  by 
many  men  of  the  world  who  may  overhear  it,  and  that  is,  the 
practice  of  ai-guing,  or,  if  that  be  a  word  in  bad  repute,  of  dis- 
cussing. But  then  I  have  many  limitations  to  add  to  such  recom- 
mendation. It  is  as  unfair  to  compel  a  man  to  discuss  with  you, 
who  can  not  jilay  the  game,  or  does  not  like  it,  as  it  would  be  to 
compel  a  person  to  play  at  chess  with  you  under  similar  circum- 
stances :  neither  is  such  a  sort  of  exercise  of  the  mind  suitable  to 
the  rapidity  and  equal  division  of  general  conversation.  Such  sort 
of  ijractices  are,  of  course,  as  ill-bi-ed  and  as  absurd  as  it  would  be 
to  pull  out  a  grammar  and  dictionary  m  a  general  society,  and  to 
prosecute  the  study  of  a  language.  But  when  two  men  meet 
together  who  love  truth,  and  discuss  any  difficult  point  with  good 
nature  and  a  respect  for  each  other's  understandings,  it  always 
imparts  a  high  degree  of  steadiness  and  certainty  to  our  know- 
ledge ;  or,  what  is  nearly  of  equal  value,  and  certainly  of  greater 
difficulty,  it  convinces  us  of  our  ignorance.  It  is  an  exercise 
grossly  abused  by  those  who  have  recourse  to  it,  and  is  very  apt 
to  degenerate  into  a  habit  of  jjerpetual  contradiction,  which  is  tlie 
most  tu'esome  and  most  disgusting  in  all  the  catalogue  of  imbecili- 
ties. It  is  an  exercise  which  timid  men  dread — from  wliich  ir- 
ritable men  ought  to  abstain ;  but  which,  in  my  humble  opinion, 
advances  a  man,  who  is  calm  enough  for  it,  and  strong  enough  for 
it,  far  beyond  any  other  method  of  employing  the  mind.  Indeed, 
a  promptitude  to  discuss,  is  so  far  a  proof  of  a  sound  mind,  that, 
whenever  we  feel  pain  and  alarm  at  our  opinions  being  called  in 
question,  it  is  almost  a  certain  sign,  that  they  have  been  taken  up 
without  examination,  or  that  the  reasons  which  once  determined 
our  judgment  have  vanished  away. 

I  direct  these  observations  only  to  those  who  are  capable  of 
discussing ;  for  there  are  many  who  have  not  the  quickness  and 
the  presence  of  mind  necessary  for  it,  and  who,  in  consequence, 
must  be  compelled  to  yield  then*  opinions  to  the  last  speaker 


204  USE   OF  OTHERS. 

And  there  is  no  question,  that  it  is  far  preferable  to  remain  under 
the  influence  of  moderate  errors,  than  to  be  bandied  about  for  the 
whole  of  Hfe  from  one  opinion  to  another,  at  the  pleasure,  and  for 
the  sport  of  superior  intelligence. 

But  other  men's  understandings  are  to  be  made  use  of,  in  the 
conduct  of  your  own,  in  many  other  methods  than  in  that  of  dis- 
cussion. Lord  Bacon  says,  that  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  know- 
ledge, we  must  put  on  the  spirit  of  little  children ;  and  if  he  means 
that  we  are  to  submit  to  be  taught  by  whoever  can,  or  will  teach 
us,  it  is  a  habit  of  mind  which  leads  to  very  rapid  improvement ; 
because  a  person  who  possesses  it  is  always  putting  himself  in  a 
train  to  correct  his  prejudices,  and  dissolve  his  unphilosophical  as- 
sociations. The  truth  is,  that  most  men  want  knowledge,  not  for 
itself,  but  for  the  superiority  which  knowledge  confers ;  and  the 
means  they  employ  to  secure  this  superiority,  are  as  wrong  as  the 
ultimate  object,  for  no  man  can  ever  end  with  being  superior,  who 
will  not  begin  with  being  inferior.  The  readiest  way  of  founding 
that  empire  of  talent  and  knowledge  which  is  the  mistaken  end 
such  men  propose  to  themselves  of  knowledge,  is,  patiently  to  gather 
from  every  understanding  that  will  impart  them,  the  materials  of 
your  future  power  and  importance.  There  are  some  sayings  in 
our  language  about  merit  being  always  united  with  modesty,  &c. 
(I  suppose  because  they  both  begin  with  an  in,  for  alliteration  has 
a  great  power  over  proverbs,  and  proverbs  over  public  opinion)  ; 
but  I  fancy  that  in  the  majority  of  instances,  the  fact  is  directly 
the  reverse — that  talents  and  arrogance  are  commonly  united, 
and  that  most  clever  young  men  of  eighteen  or  nineteen  believe 
themselves  to  be  about  the  level  of  Demosthenes,  or  Virgil,  or  the 
Admirable  Crichton,  or  John  Duke  of  Marlborough :  but  whatever 
the  fact  be  with  respect  to  modesty,  and  omitting  all  the  popularity 
and  policy  of  modesty,  I  am  sure  modesty  is  a  part  of  talent ;  that 
a  certain  tendency  to  hear  what  others  have  to  say,  and  to  give  it 
its  due  weight  and  importance,  is  quite  as  valuable  as  it  is  ami- 
able ;  that  it  is  a  vast  promoter  of  knowledge ;  and  that  the  con- 
trary habit  of  general  contempt,  is  a  very  dangerous  practice  in 
the  conduct  of  the  understanding.  It  exists,  I  am  afraid,  com- 
monly in  the  minds  of  able  men,  but  they  would  be  much  better 
>vdthout  it 


SUBTILTIE3.  205 

SKErxicisar. 

As  for  gei.sral  skepticism,  the  only  way  to  avoid  it  is,  to 
seize  on  some  first  jirinciples  arbitrarily,  and  not  to  quit  them. 
Take  as  few  as  you  can  help — about  a  tenth  part  of  what  Dr. 
Reid  has  taken  Avill  suffice  —  but  take  some,  and  proceed  to  build 
upon  them.  As  I  have  before  mentioned,  the  leading  principle 
of  Descartes'  philosophy  was,  Cogito,  ergo  sum  —  "I  tliink,  there- 
fore I  exist;"  and  having  laid  this  foundation-stone,  he  built  an 
enormous  building,  the  ruins  of  which  lie  scattered  up  and  down 
among  the  sciences  in  disordered  glory  and  venerable  confusion. 
Some  of  his  disciples,  however,  could  never  get  a  single  step 
farther ;  —  they  admitted  their  own  existence,  but  could  never 
deduce  any  one  single  truth  from  it.  One  might  almost  wish  that 
these  gentlemen  had  disencumbered  themselves  of  this  their  only 
idea,  by  running  down  steep  places,  or  walking  very  far  into  pro- 
found ponds,  rather  than  that  they  should  exliibit  such  a  spectacle 
of  stupidity  and  perversion. 

Such  sort  of  questions  as  the  credibiUty  of  memory,  and  per- 
sonal identity,  are  not  merely  innocent  subtilties.  I  admit  it  is 
quite  impossible  in  practice  to  disbelieve  either  the  one  or  the 
other :  but  they  excite  a  suspicion  of  the  perfect  uncertainty  of 
all  knowledge ;  and  they  often  keep  young  men  hesitating  and 
quibbhng  about  the  rudiments  of  aU  knowledge,  instead  of  push- 
ing on  their  inquiries  with  cheerfulness  and  vigour.  I  am  sure  I 
am  not  stating  an  ideal  evil ;  but  I  know  from  actual  experience, 
that  many  understandings  have  been  retarded  for  years  in  their 
prosecution  of  solid  and  valuable  knowledge,  because  they  could 
see  no  evidence  for  first  principles,  and  were  unable  to  prove  that 
which,  by  the  very  meaning  of  the  expression  must  be  incapable 
of  all  proof  They  considered  the  whole  as  an  unstable  and  un- 
philosophical  fabric,  and  contracted  either  an  indifference  to,  or 
contempt  for  truth.  And  if  you  choose  to  call  all  knowledge  hy- 
pothetical, because  first  principles  are  arbitrarily  assumed,  you 
certainly  mai/  call  it  so,  if  you  please; "but  then  I  only  contend 
that  it  does  quite  as  well  as  if  it  were  not  hypothetical,  oecause 
all  the  various  errors  agree  perfectly  well  together,  and  produce 
that  happiness  which  is  the  end  of  knowledge. 


206       THE  ROUND  MAN  IN  THE  EOUND  HOLE. 
THE  KIGHT  MAN  IN  THE  EIGHT  PLACE. 

It  is  a  very  wise  rule  in  the  conduct  of  the  understanding,  to 
acquire  eai'ly  a  correct  notion  of  your  own  peculiar  constitution 
of  mind,  and  to  become  well  acquainted,  as  a  physician  would  say, 
with  your  idiosyncrasy.  Are  you  an  acute  man,  and  see  sharply 
for  small  distances?  or  are  you  a  comprehensive  man,  and  able  to 
take  in  wide  and  extensive  views  into  your  mind  ?  Does  your 
mind  turn  its  ideas  into  wit  ?  or  are  you  apt  to  take  a  common- 
sense  view  of  the  objects  presented  to  you  ?  Have  you  an  exu- 
berant imagination,  or  a  correct  judgment?  Ai-e  you  quick,  or 
slow  ?  accurate,  or  hasty  ?  a  great  reader,  or  a  great  thinker  ?  It 
is  a  prodigious  point  gained  if  any  man  can  find  out  where  his 
powers  lie,  and  what  are  his  deficiencies — if  he  can  contrive  to 
ascertain  what  Nature  intended  him  for :  and  such  are  the  changes 
and  chances  of  the  world,  and  so  difficult  is  it  to  ascertain  our  own 
understandings,  or  those  of  others,  that  most  tilings  ai'e  done  by 
persons  who  could  have  done  something  else  better.  If  you 
choose  to  represent  the  various  parts  in  life  by  holes  upon  a  table, 
of  different  shapes  —  some  circular,  some  triangular,  some  square, 
some  oblong — and  the  persons  acting  these  parts  by  bits  of  wood 
of  similar  shapes,  we  shall  generally  find  that  the  triangular  person 
has  got  into  the  square  hole,  the  oblong  into  the  triangular,  and 
a  square  person  has  squeezed  liimself  into  the  round  hole.  The 
officer  and  the  office,  the  doer  and  the  thing  done,  seldom  fit  so 
exactly,  that  we  can  say  they  were  almost  made  for  each  other. 


REWARDS    OF    KNOWLEDGE. 

But  while  I  am  descanting  so  minutely  upon  the  conduct  of 
the  understanding,  and  the  best  modes  of  acquiring  knowledge, 
some  men  may  be  disposed  to  ask,  "Why  conduct  my  under- 
standing with  such  endless  care  ?  and  what  is  the  use  of  so  much 
knowledge  ?"  What  is  the  use  of  so  much  knowledge  ? — what  is 
the  use  of  so  much  life? — what  are  we  to  do  with  the  seventy 
years  of  existence  allotted  to  us? — and  how  are  we  to  live  them 
out  to  the  last?  I  solemnly  declare  that,  but  for  the  love  of 
knowledge,  I  should  consider  the  life  of  the  meanest  hedger  and 
dilcher,  as  preferable  to  that  of  the  greatest  and  richest  man  here 


WAYS    OF    WISDOM.  207 

present :  for  the  fire  of  our  minds  is  like  the  fire  which  the  Persians 
bum  in  the  mountains — it  flames  night  and  day,  and  is  immortal, 
and  not  to  be  quenched  !  Upon  something  it  must  act  and  feed — • 
upon  the  pure  spirit  of  knowledge,  or  upon  the  foul  dregs  of  pol- 
luting passions.  Therefore,  when  I  say,  in  conducting  your  under- 
standing, love  knowledge  with  a  great  love,  with  a  vehement  love, 
with  a  love  coeval  with  life,  what  do  I  say,  but  love  innocence  — 
love  virtue  —  love  purity  of  conduct  —  love  that  wliich,  if  you  are 
rich  and  great,  will  sanctify  the  blind  fortune  which  has  made  you 
so,  and  make  men  call  it  justice — love  that  wliich,  if  you  are 
poor,  will  render  your  poverty  respectable,  and  make  the  proudest 
feel  it  unjust  to  laugh  at  the  meanness  of  your  fortunes — love  that 
which  will  comfort  you,  adorn  you,  and  never  quit  you — which 
will  open  to  you  the  kingdom  of  thought,  and  all  the  boundless 
regions  of  conception,  as  an  asylum  against  the  craelty,  the  in- 
justice, and  the  pain,  that  may  be  your  lot  in  the  outer  world — ■ 
that  which  will  make  your  motives  habitually  great  and  honour- 
able, and  light  up  in  an  instant  a  thousand  noble  disdains  at  the 
very  thought  of  meanness  and  of  fraud  !  Therefore,  if  any  young 
man  here  have  embarked  his  life  in  pursuit  of  Knowledge,  let  him 
go  on  without  doubtuig  or  fearing  the  event ;  —  let  liim  not  be  in- 
timidated by  the  cheerless  beginnings  of  knowledge,  by  the  dark- 
ness from  which  she  springs,  by  the  difficulties  which  hover 
around  her,  by  the  wretched  habitations  in  which  she  dwells,  by 
the  want  and  sorrow  which  sometimes  journey  in  her  train ;  but 
let  him  ever  follow  her  as  the  Angel  that  guards  him,  and  as  the 
Genius  of  his  Ufe.  She  will  bring  him  out  at  last  into  the  light 
of  day,  and  exhibit  him  to  the  world  comprehensive  in  acquire- 
ments, fertile  in  resources,  rich  in  imagination,  strong  in  reasoning, 
prudent  and  powerful  above  his  fellows,  in  all  the  relations  and  in 
all  the  offices  of  Ufe. 


EMULATION.  * 

One  of  the  best  methods  of  rendering  study  agreeable  is  to  live 
with  able  men,  and  to  suffer  all  those  pangs  of  inferiority,  which 
the  want  of  knowledge  always  inflicts.      Nothing  short  of  some 

*  This  passage  atd  the  following,  are  from  the  second  Lecture  on  the  Con- 
duel  of  the  Understanding. 


208  EAENEST   STUDY. 

such  powerful  motive,  can  drive  a  young  person  in  the  full  pos- 
session of  health  and  bodily  activity,  to  such  an  unnatural  and  such 
an  unobvious  mode  of  passing  his  life  as  study.  But  this  is  the 
way  that  intellectual  greatness  often  begins.  The  trophies  of  Mil- 
tiades  drive  away  sleep.  A  young  man  sees  the  honour  in  which 
knowledge  is  held  by  his  fellow-creatures  ;  and  he  surrenders  every 
present  gratification,  that  he  may  gain  them.  The  honour  in 
which  living  genius  is  held,  the  trophies  by  which  it  is  adorned 
after  life,  it  receives  and  enjoys  from  the  feelings  of  men  —  not 
from  their  sense  of  duty :  but  men  never  obey  this  feeling  without 
discharging  the  first  of  all  duties,  without  securing  the  rise  and 
growth  of  genius,  and  increasing  the  dignity  of  our  nature,  by 
enlarging  the  dominion  of  mind.  No  eminent  man  was  ever  yet 
rewarded  in  vain  ;  no  breath  of  praise  was  ever  idly  lavished  upon 
him ;  it  has  never  yet  been  idle  and  foolish  to  rear  up  splendid 
monuments  to  his  name  :  the  rumour  of  these  things  impels  young 
minds  to  the  noblest  exertions,  creates  in  them  an  empire  over 
present  passions,  inures  them  to  the  severest  toils,  determines 
them  to  live  only  for  the  use  of  others,  and  to  leave  a  great  and 
lasting  memorial  behind  them. 


HEARTY   READING. 

Beside  the  shame  of  inferiority,  and  the  love  of  reputation, 
curiosity  is  a  passion  very  favourable  to  the  love  of  study  and  a 
passion  very  susceptible  of  increase  by  cultivation.  Sound  travels 
60  many  feet  in  a  second ;  and  light  travels  so  many  feet  in  a 
second.  Notliing  more  probable :  but  you  do  not  care  hoio  light 
and  sound  travel.  Very  likely :  but  mahe  yourself  care  ;  get  up, 
shake  yourself  well,  pretend  to  care,  make  believe  to  care,  and 
very  soon  you  \oill  care,  and  care  so  much,  that  you  will  sit  for 
hours  thinking  about  light  and  sound,  and  be  extremely  angry 
with  any  one  who  interrupts  you  in  your  pursuits ;  and  tolerate 
no  other  conversation  but  about  light  and  sound  ;  and  catch  your- 
self plaguing  everybody  to  death  who  approaches  you,  with  the 
discussion  of  these  subjects.  I  am  sure  that  a  man  ought  to  read 
as  he  would  grasp  a  nettle  :  —  do  it  lightly,  and  you  get  molested ; 
grasp  it  with  all  your  strength,  and  you  feel  none  of  its  asperities. 
There  is  nothing  so  horrible  as  languid  study ;  when  you  sit  look- 


THE   STUDENT  LIFE.  209 

ing  at  the  clock,  wishing  the  time  was  over,  or  that  somebody- 
would  call  on  j^ou  and  put  you  out  of  your  misery.  Tlie  .only 
way  to  read  ^vith  any  etHcacy,  is  to  read  so  heartily,  that  dinner- 
time comes  two  hours  before  you  expected  it.  To  sit  with  your 
Livy  before  you,  and  hear  the  geese  cackling  that  saved  the  Cap- 
itol ;  and  to  see  with  your  own  eyes  the  Carthaginian  sutlers 
gathering  up  the  rings  of  the  Roman  kniglits  after  the  battle  of 
Canna3,  and  heaping  them  into  bushels ;  and  to  be  so  intimately 
present  at  the  actions  you  are  reading  of,  that  when  anybody 
knocks  at  the  door,  it  will  take  you  two  or  three  seconds  to  de- 
termine whether  you  are  in  your  own  study,  or  in  the  plains  of 
Lombardy,  looking  at  Hannibal's  weather-beaten  face,  and  admir- 
ing the  splendour  of  his  single  eye  ;  —  this  is  the  only  kind  of  study 
which  is  not  tii'esome  ;  and  almost  the  only  kind  which  is  not  use- 
less :  this  is  the  knowledge  which  gets  into  the  system,  and  which 
a  man  carries  about  and  uses  like  his  Hmbs,  without  perceiving 
that  is  it  extraneous,  weighty,  or  inconvenient. 


HABITS    OF   STUDY. 

To  study  successfully,  the  body  must  be  healthy,  the  mind  at 
ease,  and  time  managed  with  great  economy.  Persons  who  study 
many  hours  in  the  day,  should  perhaps,  have  two  separate  pursuits 
going  on  at  the  same  time  —  one  for  one  part  of  the  day,  and  the 
other  for  the  other ;  and  these  of  as  opposite  a  nature  as  possible, 
— as  EucUd  and  Ariosto ;  Locke  and  Homer  ;  Hartley  on  Man, 
and  Voyages  round  the  Globe ;  that  the  mind  may  be  refreshed 
by  change,  and  all  the  bad  effects  of  lassitude  avoided.  There 
is  one  piece  of  advice,  in  a  life  of  study,  which  I  think  no  one 
will  object  to ;  and  that  is,  every  now  and  then  to  be  completely 
idle — to  do  nothing  at  all:  indeed,  this  part  of  a  life  of  study  is 
commonly  considered  as  so  decidedly  superior  to  the  rest,  that  it 
has  almost  obtained  an  exclusive  preference  over  those  other  parts 
of  the  system,  with  which  I  wish  to  see  it  connected. 

It  has  been  often  asked  whether  a  man  should  study  at  stated 
intervals,  or  as  the  fit  seizes  him,  and  as  he  finds  himself  disposed 
to  study..  To  this  I  answer,  that  where  a  man  cap  trust  himself, 
rules  are  superfluous.  If  his  inclinations  lead  him  to  a  fair  share 
of  exertion,  he  had  much  better  trust  to  his  inclinations  alone ; 


210  ART    OF   THINKING. 

where  they  do  not,  they  must  be  controlled  by  rules.  It  is  just  the 
same  with  sleep ;  and  Avith  everything  else.  Sleep  as  much  as 
you  please,  if  your  inclination  lead  you  only  to  sleep  as  much  as 
is  convenient;  if  not,  make  I'ules.  The  system  in  everything 
ought  to  be — do  as  you  please — so  long  as  you  please  to  do 
what  is  right.  Upon  these  principles,  every  man  must  see  how 
far  he  may  trust  to  his  inclinations,  before  he  takes  away  their  nat- 
ural hberty.  I  confess,  however,  it  has  never  fallen  to  my  lot  to 
see  many  persons  who  could  be  trusted ;  and  the  method,  I  believe, 
in  which  most  great  men  have  gone  to  work,  is  by  regular  and 
systematic  industry. 

A  little  hard  thinking  will  supply  the  place  of  a  great  deal  of 
reading ;  and  an  hour  or  two  spent  in  this  manner  sometimes  lead 
you  to  conclusions  which  it  would  require  a  volume  to  establish. 
The  mind  advances  in  its  train  of  thought,  as  a  restiff  colt  pro- 
ceeds on  the  road  in  which  you  wish  to  guide  him ;  he  is  always 
running  to  one  side  or  the  other,  and  deviating  from  the  proper 
path,  to  which  it  is  your  affair  to  bi'ing  him  back.  I  have  asked 
several  men  what  passes  in  their  minds  when  they  are  thinking ; 
and  I  never  could  find  any  man  who  could  think  for  two  minutes 
together.  Everybody  has  seemed  to  admit  that  it  was  a  perpet- 
ual deviation  from  a  particular  path,  and  a  perpetual  return  to  it ; 
which,  imperfect  as  the  operation  is,  is  the  only  method  in  which 
we  can  operate  with  our  minds  to  carry  on  any  process  of  thought. 
It  takes  some  time  to  throw  the  mind  into  an  attitude  of  thought, 
or  into  any  attitude ;  though  the  power  of  doing  this,  and,  in  gen- 
eral, of  thinking,  is  amazingly  increased  by  habit.  We  acquire,  at 
length,  a  greater  command  over  our  associations,  and  are  better 
enabled  to  pursue  one  object,  unmoved  by  aU  the  other  thoughts 
which  cross  it  in  every  direction. 

One  of  the  best  modes  of  improving  in  the  art  of  thinking,  is,  to 
think  over  some  subject,  before  you  read  upon  it ;  and  then  to  ob- 
serve after  what  manner  it  has  occurred  to  the  mind  of  some  great 
master.  You  will  then  observe  whether  you  have  been  too  rash 
or  too  timid ;  what  you  have  omitted,  and  in  what  you  have  ex- 
ceeded ;  and  by  this  process  you  will  insensibly  catch  a  great  man- 
ner of  viewing,  a  question.  It  is  right  in  study,  not  only  to  think 
when  any  extraordinary  incident  provokes  you  to  think,  but  from 
time  to  time  to  review  what  has  passed ;  to  dwell  upon  it,  and  to 


WEITING   AND   REFLECTION.  211 

see  what  trains  of  tlioiight  voluntaiily  present  themselves  to  your 
mind.  It  is  a  most  superior  habit  of  some  minds,  to  refer  all  the 
particular  truths  which  strike  them,  to  other  truths  more  general : 
so  that  their  knowledge  is  beautifully  methodized  :  and  the  general 
truth  at  any  time  suggests  all  the  particular  exemplifications ;  or 
any  particular  exemplification,  at  once  leads  to  the  general  truth. 
This  kind  of  understanding  has  an  immense  and  decided  superior- 
ity over  those  confused  heads  in  which  one  fact  is  piled  upon  an- 
other, without  the  least  attempt  at  classification  and  arrangement. 
Some  men  always  read  with  a  pen  in  theh*  hand,  and  commit  to 
paper  any  new  thought  which  strikes  them ;  others  trust  to  chance 
for  its  reappearance.  Which  of  these  is  the  best  method  in  the 
conduct  of  the  understanding,  must,  I  should  suppose,  depend  a 
great  deal  upon  the  particular  understanding  in  question.  Some 
men  can  do  nothing  without  preparation;  others,  little  with  it: 
some  are  fountains,  some  reservoirs.  My  very  humble  and  limited 
experience  goes  to  convince  me,  that  it  is  a  very  useless  practice ; 
that  men  seldom  read  again  what  they  have  committed  to  paper, 
nor  remember  what  they  have  so  committed  one  iota  the  better  for 
their  additional  trouble :  on  the  contrary,  I  believe  it  has  a  direct 
tendency  to  destroy  the  promptitude  and  tenacity  of  memory,  by 
diminishing  the  vigour  of  present  attention,  and  seducing  the  mind 
to  depend  upon  future  reference  :  at  least,  such  is  the  effect  I  have 
uniformly  found  it  to  produce  upon  myself;  and  the  same  remark 
has  been  frequently  made  to  me  by  other  persons,  of  their  own 
habits  of  study.  I  am  by  no  means  contending  against  the  utility 
and  expediency  of  writing ;  on  the  contrary,  I  am  convinced  there 
can  be  no  very  great  accuracy  of  mind  without  it.  I  am  only  an- 
imadverting upon  that  exaggerated  use  of  it,  which  disunites  the 
mind  from  the  body :  renders  the  understanding  no  longer  portable, 
but  leaves  a  man's  wit  and  talents  neatly  written  out  in  his  com- 
monplace book,  and  safely  locked  up  in  the  bottom  drawer  of 
Ills  bureau.  This  is  the  abuse  of  writing.  The  use  of  it,  I  pre- 
sume, is,  to  give  perspicuity  and  accuracy  ;  to  fix  a  habitation  for, 
and  to  confer  a  name  upon,  our  ideas,  so  that  they  may  be  con- 
sidered and  reconsidered  themselves,  and  in  their  arrangement. 
Every  nian  is  extremely  liable  to  be  deceived  in  his  reflections, 
till  he  has  habituated  himself  to  putting  his  thoughts  upon  paper, 
and  perceived,  from  such  a  process,  how  often  pi-opositions  that  ap- 


** 


212  BOOKS   AND    CONVERSATION. 

peared,  before  such  development,  to  be  almost  demonstrable,  have 
vanished  into  nonsense  when  a  clearer  light  has  been  thrown  upon 
them.  I  should  presume,  also,  that  much  writing  must  teach  a 
good  order  and  method  in  the  disposition  of  our  reasonings ;  be- 
cause the  connection  of  any  one  part  with  the  whole,  will  be  made 
so  much  more  evident  than  it  can  be  befoi'e  it  is  put  into  visible 
signs.  Writing,  also,  must  teach  a  much  more  accurate  use  of  lan- 
guage. In  conversation,  any  language  almost  will  do ;  that  is,  great 
indulgence  is  extended  to  the  language  of  talkers,  because  a  talker 
is  at  hand  to  explain  himself,  and  his  looks  and  gestures  are  a  sort 
of  comment  upon  his  words,  and  help  to  interpret  them :  but  as  a 
writer  has  no  such  auxihary  language  to  communicate  his  ideas, 
and  no  power  of  re-explaining  them  when  once  clothed  in  language, 
he  has  nothing  to  depend  upon  but  a  steady  and  careful  use  of 
terms. 


CONVERSATION. 

The  advantage  conversation  has  over  all  the  other  modes  of  im- 
proving the  mind,  is,  that  it  is  more  natural  and  more  interesting.  A 
book  has  no  eyes,  and  ears,  and  feelings ;  the  best  are  apt  every  now 
and  then  to  become  a  little  languid ;  whereas,  a  living  book  walks 
about,  and  varies  his  conversation  and  manner,  and  j^revents  you 
from  going  to  sleep.  There  is  certainly  a  great  evil  in  this,  as 
well  as  a  good  ;  for  the  interest  between  a  man  and  his  living  folio, 
becomes  sometimes  a  little  too  keen,  and  in  the  competition  for 
victory  they  become  a  little  too  animated  toAvard,  and  sometimes 
exasperated  against,  each  other ;  whereas,  a  man  and  his  book 
generally  keep  the  peace  with  tolerable  success ;  and  if  they  dis- 
agree, the  man  shuts  his  book,  and  tosses  it  into  a  corner  of  the 
room,  which  it  might  not  be  quite  so  safe  or  easy  to  do  with  a  liv- 
ing folio.  It  is  an  inconvenience  in  a  book,  that  you  can  not  ask 
questions  ;  there  is  no  explanation ;  and  a  man  is  less  guarded  in 
conversation  than  in  a  book,  and  tells  you  with  more  honesty  the 
little  niceties  and  exceptions  of  his  opinions ;  whereas,  in  a  book, 
as  his  opinions  are  canvassed  where  they  cannot  be  explained 
and  defended,  he  often  overstates  a  point  for  fear  of  beuig  misun- 
derstood ;  but  then,  on  the  contrary,  almost  every  man  talks  a 
great  deal  better  in  his  books,  with  more  sense,  more  information, 


INDIVIDUAL   TALENT.  213 

and  more  reflection  than  he  can  possibly  do  in  his  conversation^ 
because  he  has  more  time. 


ALLOWANCE    FOR    INDIVIDUAL    PECULIARITIES. 

It  is  a  great  thing  toward  making  riglit  judgments,  if  a  man 
know  what  allowance  to  make  for  himself;  and  what  discount 
should  habitually  be  given  to  his  opinions,  according  as  he  is  old 
or  young,  French  or  English,  clergyman  or  layman,  rich  or  poor, 
torpid  or  fiery,  healthy  or  ill,  sorrowful  or  gay.  All  these  various 
circumstances  are  perpetually  communicating  to  the  objects  about 
them  a  colour  which  is  not  their  true  colour !  whereas  wisdom  is 
of  no  age,  nation,  profession,  or  temperament ;  and  is  neither  sor- 
rowful nor  sad.  A  man  must  have  some  pai'ticular  qualities,  and 
be  affected  by  some  particular  circumstances ;  but  the  object  is,  to 
discover  what  they  are,  and  habitually  to  allow  for  them. 


STICK    TO    YOUR    GENIUS. 

There  is  one  circumstance  I  would  preach  up,  morning,  noon, 
and  night,  to  young  persons  for  the  management  of  their  under- 
standing. Whatever  you  are  from  nature,  keep  to  it;  never  desert 
your  own  line  of  talent.  If  Providence  only  intended  you  to  write 
posies  for  rings,  or  mottoes  for  twelfth-cakes,  keep  to  posies  and 
mottoes ;  a  good  motto  for  a  twelfth-cake  is  more  respectable  than 
a  villanous  epic  poem  in  twelve  books.  Be  what  nature  intended 
you  for,  and  you  will  succeed ;  be  anything  else,  and  you  will  be 
ten  thousand  times  worse  than  nothins;. 


USES    OF   WIT. 

If  black  and  white  men  live  together,  the  consequence  is,  that, 
unless  great  care  be  taken,  they  quarrel  and  fight.  There  is  nearly 
as  strong  a  disposition  in  men  of  opposite  minds  to  despise  each 
other.  A  grave  man  cannot  conceive  what  is  the  use  of  wit  in 
society ;  a  person  who  takes  a  strong  common-sense  view  of  a  s ub- 
jectj'is  for  pushing  out  by  the  head  and  shoulders  an  ingenious 
theorist,  who  catches  at  the  hghtest  and  faintest  analogies ;  and 
another  man,  who  scents  the  ridiculous  from  afar,  will  hold  no 


214  ECONOMY    OF   INTELLECT. 

commerce  with  him  who  tastes  exquisitely  the  fine  feelings  of  the 
heart,  and  is  alive  to  nothing  else ;  whereas  talent  is  talent,  and 
mind  is  mind,  in  all  its  branches  !  Wit  gives  to  life  one  of  its  best 
flavours ;  common  sense  leads  to  immediate  action,  and  gives  so- 
ciety its  daily  motion ;  large  and  comprehensive  views,  its  annual 
rotation ;  ridicule  chastises  folly  and  impudence,  and  keeps  men  in 
their  proper  sphere ;  subtlety  seizes  hold  of  the  fine  threads  of 
truth ;  analogy  darts  away  to  the  most  sublime  discoveries ;  feel- 
ing pamts  all  the  exquisite  passions  of  man's  soul,  and  rewards 
him  by  a  thousand  inward  visitations  for  the  sorrows  that  come 
from  without.  God  made  it  all !  It  is  all  good  !  We  must  despise 
no  sort  of  talent ;  they  all  have  their  separate  duties  and  uses  ;  all, 
the  happiness  of  man  for  their  object ;  they  all  improve,  exalt,  and 
gladden  life. 


CAUTION. 

Caution,  though  it  must  be  considered  as  something  very  dif- 
ferent from  talent,  is  no  mean  aid  to  every  species  of  talent.  As 
some  men  are  so  skilful  in  economy,  that  they  will  do  as  much  with 
a  hundred  pounds  as  another  will  do  with  two,  so  there  are  a 
species  of  men,  who  have  a  wonderful  management  of  their  under- 
standings, and  will  make  as  great  a  show,  and  enjoy  as  much  con- 
sideration, with  a  certain  quantity  of  understanding,  as  others  will 
do  with  the  double  of  their  portion ;  and  this  by  watching  times 
and  persons ;  by  taking  strong  positions,  and  never  fighting  but 
fifom  the  vantage  ground,  and  with  great  disparity  of  numbers ; 
in  short,  by  risking  nothing,  and  by  a  perpetual  and  systematic 
attention  to  the  security  of  reputation.  Such  rigid  economy — by 
laying  out  every  shilling  at  compound  interest — very  often  accu- 
mulates a  large  stock  of  fame,  where  the  original  capital  has  been 
very  inconsiderable ;  and,  of  course,  may  command  any  degree  of 
opulence,  where  it  sets  out  from  great  beginnings,  and  is  united 
with  real  genius.  For  the  want  of  this  caution,  there  is  an  habit- 
ual levity  sometimes  fixes  itself  upon  the  minds  of  able  men,  and 
a  certain  manner  of  viewing  and  discussing  all  questions  in  a  frivo- 
lous mocking  manner,  as  if  they  had  looked  through  all  human 
knowledge,  and  found  in  it  nothing  but  what  they  could  easily 
master,  and  were  entitled  to  despise.    Of  all  mistakes  the  greatest,  to 


REPAIR  OP  FAILURE,  215 

live  and  to  tliink  life  of  no  consequence  ;  to  fritter  away  the  powers 
of  the  understanding,  merely  to  malvC  others  believe  that  you  pos- 
sess them  in  a  more  eminent  degree ;  and  gradually  to  diminish 
your  interest  in  human  affairs,  from  an  affected  air  of  superiority, 
to  which  neither  yourself  nor  any  human  being  can  possibly  be  en- 
titled. It  is  a  beautiful  mark  of  a  healthy  and  right  understand- 
ing, when  a  man  is  serious  and  attentive  to  all  great  questions ; 
when  you  observe  him,  with  modesty  and  attention,  adding  gradu- 
ally to  his  conviction  and  knowledge  on  such  topics  ;  not  repulsed 
by  his  own  previous  mistakes,  not  disgusted  by  the  mistakes  of 
others,  but  in  spite  of  violence  and  error,  beheving  that  there  is, 
somewhere  or  other,  moderation  and  truth — and  that  to  seek  that 
truth  with  diligence,  with  seriousness,  and  with  constancy,  is  one  of 
the  highest  and  best  objects  for  which  a  man  can  live. 

Some  men  get  early  disgusted  with  the  task  of  improvement, 
and  the  cultivation  of  the  mind,  from  some  excesses  which  they 
have  committed,  and  mistakes  into  which  they  have  been  betrayed, 
at  the  beginning  of  life.  They  abuse  the  whole  ai't  of  navigation, 
because  they  have  stuck  upon  a  shoal ;  whereas,  the  business  is, 
to  refit,  careen,  and  set  out  a  second  time.  The  navigation  is  very 
difficult ;  few  of  us  get  through  it  at  first,  without  some  rubs  and 
losses — which  the  world  are  always  ready  enough  to  forgive, 
where  they  ai-e  honestly  confessed,  and  diligently  repaired.  It 
would,  indeed,  be  a  piteous  case,  if  a  young  man  were  pinioned 
down  tlu'ough  life  to  the  first  nonsense  he  happens  to  write  or  talk ; 
and  the  world  are,  to  do  them  justice,  sufficiently  ready  to  release 
them  from  such  obligation ;  but  what  they  do  not  forgive  is,  that 
juvenile  enthusiasm  and  error,  which  ends  in  mature  profligacy ; 
which  begins  with  mistaking  what  is  right,  and  ends  with  denying 
that  there  is  any  right  at  all :  which  leaps  from  partial  confi- 
dence to  universal  skepticism ;  which  says,  "  There  is  no  such  tiling 
as  true  religion  and  rational  liberty,  because  I  have  been  a  furious 
zealot,  or  a  sechtious  demagogue."  Such  men  should  be  taught 
that  wickedness  is  never  an  atonement  for  mistake ;  and  they  should 
be  held  out  as  a  lesson  to  the  young,  that  unless  they  are  contented 
to  form  their  opinions  modestly,  they  will  too  often  be  induced  to 
abandon  them  entirely. 

Tliere  is  something  extremely  fascinating  in  quickness ;  and 
most  men  are  desirous  of  appearing  quick.     The  great  rule  for  be- 


216  SEARCH  AFTER  TRUTH. 

coming  so,  is,  hy  not  attempting  to  ajypear  quicker  than  you  really 
are  ;  by  resolving  to  understand  yourself  and  others,  and  to  know 
what  you  mean,  and  what  they  mean,  before  you  speak  or  answer. 
Every  man  must  submit  to  be  slow  before  he  is  quick ;  and  insig- 
nificant before  he  is  important. 


PLEASURES    OF    KNOWLEDGE. 

The  too  early  struggle  against  the  pain  of  obscurity,  corrupts  no 
small  share  of  understandings.  Well  and  happily  has  that  man 
conducted  his  understanding,  who  has  learned  to  derive  from  the 
exercise  of  it,  regular  occupation  and  rational  delight ;  who,  after 
having  overcome  the  first  pain  of  application,  and  acquired  a  habit 
of  looking  inwardly  upon  his  own  mmd,  perceives  that  every  day 
is  multiplying  the  relations,  confirming  the  accuracy,  and  augment- 
ing the  number  of  his  ideas ;  who  feels  that  he  is  rising  in  the 
scale  of  intellectual  beings,  gathering  new  strength  with  every 
difficulty  which  he  subdues,  and  enjoying  to-day  as  his  pleasure, 
that  which  yesterday  he  laboured  at  as  his  toil.  There  are  many 
consolations  in  the  mind  of  such  a  man,  wliich  no  common  life  can 
ever  afibrd ;  and  many  enjoyments  which  it  has  not  to  give  !  It  is 
not  the  mere  cry  of  moralists,  and  the  flourish  of  rhetoricians  ;  but 
it  is  noble  to  seek  ti'uth,  and  it  is  beautiful  to  find  it.  It  is  tlie  an- 
cient feeling  of  the  human  heart,  that  knowledge  is  better  than 
riches  ;  and  it  is  deeply  and  sacredly  true  !  To  mark  the  course  of 
human  passions  as  they  have  flowed  on  in  the  ages  that  are  past ; 
to  see  Avhy  nations  have  risen,  and  why  they  have  fallen  ;  to  speak 
of  heat,  and  light,  and  the  winds ;  to  know  what  man  has  discov- 
ered in  the  heavens  above,  and  in  the  earth  beneath ;  to  hear  the 
chemist  unfold  the  marvellous  properties  that  the  Creator  has 
locked  up  in  a  speck  of  earth ;  to  be  told  that  there  are  worlds  so 
distant  from  our  sun,  that  the  quickness  of  hght  travelling  from  the 
world's  creation,  has  never  yet  reached  us,  to  wander  in  the  crea- 
tions of  poetry,  and  grow  warm  again,  with  that  eloquence  wliich 
swayed  the  democracies  of  the  old  world ;  to  go  up  with  great 
reasoners  to  the  First  Cause  of  all,  and  to  perceive  m  the  midst 
of  all  this  dissolution  and  decay,  and  cruel  separation,  that  there  is 
one  thing  unchangeable,  indestructible,  and  everlasting;  —  it  is 
worth  while  in  the  days  of  our  youth  to  sti'ive  hard  for  this  great 


WIT.  217 

discipline ;  to  pass  sleepless  nights  for  it,  to  give  up  to  it  laborious 
days  ;  to  spurn  for  it  present  pleasures ;  to  endure  for  it  afllicting 
poverty ;  to  wade  for  it  through  darkness,  and  sorrow,  and  con- 
tempt, as  the  great  spirits  of  the  world  have  done  in  all  ages  and 
all  times. 

I  appeal  to  the  experience  of  any  man  who  is  in  the  habit  of 
exercising  his  mind  vigorously  and  well,  whether  there  is  not  a 
satisfaction  in  it,  which  tells  him  he  has  been  acting  up  to  one  of 
the  great  objects  of  his  existence  ?  The  end  of  nature  has  been 
answered :  his  faculties  have  done  that  which  they  were  created  to 
do  —  not  languidly  occupied  upon  trifles — not  enervated  by  sensual 
gratification,  but  exei'cised  in  that  toil  which  is  so  congenial  to 
their  nature,  and  so  worthy  of  their  strength.  A  life  of  knowledge 
is  not  often  a  life  of  mjury  and  crime.  Whom  does  such  a  man 
oppress  ?  with  whose  happiness  does  he  interfere  ?  whom  does  his 
ambition  destroy,  and  whom  does  his  fraud  deceive  ?  In  the  pur- 
suit of  science  he  injures  no  man,  and  in  the  acquisition  he  does 
good  to  all.  A  man  who  dedicates  his  life  to  knowledge,  becomes 
habituated  to  pleasure  which  carries  with  it  no  reproach :  and  there 
is  one  security  that  he  will  never  love  that  pleasure  wliich  is  paid 
for  by  anguish  of  heart — his  pleasures  are  all  cheap,  all  digiufied, 
and  all  innocent ;  and,  as  far  as  any  human  being  can  expect  per- 
manence in  this  changing  scene,  he  has  secured  a  happiness  which 
no  malignity  of  fortune  can  ever  take  away,  but  which  must  cleave 
to  him  while  he  Uves — amelioratmg  every  good  and  diminishing 
every  evil  of  his  existence. 


ESSENTIALS    OF    WIT.* 

To  begin  at  the  beginning  of  this  discussion,  it  is  plain  that  wit 
concerns  itself  with  the  relations  which  subsist  between  our  ideas : 
and  the  first  observation  which  occurs  to  any  man  turning  liis  at- 
tention to  this  subject  is,  that  it  cannot,  of  course,  concern  itself 
with  all  the  relations  which  subsist  between  all  our  ideas  ;  for  then 
every  proposition  would  be  witty; — The  rain  wets  me  through  — 
Jiuttei;  is  spread  upon  bread  —  would  be  propositions  replete  wit!) 

*This  and  the  following  passages  are  from  Lectures  on  "Wit  and  Humour, 
Part  I. 

10 


I'ia  SUEPRISE. 

I  irtli ;  and  the  moment  the  mind  observed  :he  plastic  and  diffusi- 
ble nature  of  butter,  and  the  excellence  of  bread  as  a  substratum, 
i.  would  become  enchanted  with  this  flash  of  facetiousness.  There- 
fore, the  first  limit  to  be  affixed  to  that  observation  of  relations, 
wnich  produces  the  feeling  of  wit,  is,  that  they  must  be  relations 
wliich  excite  surprise.  If  you  tell  me  that  all  men  must  die,  I 
am  very  little  struck  with  what  you  say,  because  it  is  not  an  asser- 
tion very  remarkable  for  its  novelty ;  but  if  you  Avere  to  say  that 
man  was  like  a  time-glass — that  both  must  run  out,  and  both  ren- 
d  ir  up  their  dust,  I  should  listen  to  you  with  moi'e  attention,  be- 
cause I  should  feel  sometliing  like  surprise  at  the  sudden  relation 
you  had  struck  out  between  two  such  apparently  dissimilar  ideas 
as  a  man  and  a  time-glass. 

Surprise  is  so  essential  an  ingredient  of  wit,  that  no  Avit  Avill 
be.'U'  repetition  —  at  least  the  original  electrical  feeling  j^roduced 
by  any  piece  of  wit  can  never  be  renewed.  There  is  a  sober  sort 
o^  approbation  succeeds  at  hearing  it  the  second  time,  wliich  is  as 
different  from  its  original  rapid,  pungent  volatiUty,  as  a  bottle  of 
champagne  that  has  been  open  three  days  is,  from  one  that  has 
at  that  very  instant  emerged  from  the  darkness  of  the  cellar.  To 
hear  that  the  top  of  Mont  Blanc  is  hke  an  umbrella,  though  the 
relation  be  new  to  me,  is  not  sufficient  to  excite  surprise ;  the  idea 
is  so  very  obvious,  it  is  so  much  within  the  reach  of  the  most  ordi- 
nary understandings,  that  I  can  derive  no  sort  of  pleasure  from 
the  comparison.  The  relation  discovered,  must  be  something  re- 
vlAq  from  all  the  common  tracks  and  sheep-walks  made  in  the 
mind  ;  it  must  not  be  a  comparison  of  colour  with  colour,  and  fig- 
ure with  figure,  or  any  comparison  which,  though  individually 
new,  is  specifically  stale,  and  to  which  the  mind  has  been  in  the 
habit  of  making  many  similar ;  but  it  must  be  something  removed 
fi-^.m  common  apprehension,  distant  from  the  ordinary  haunts  of 
thought — things  which  are  never  brought  together  in  the  common 
events  of  life,  and  in  which  the  mind  has  discovered  relations  by 
its  own  subtilty  and  quickness. 

Now,  then,  the  point  we  have  arrived  at,  at  present,  in  building 
ap  our  definition  of  wit,  is,  that  it  is  the  discovery  of  those  relations 
in  ideas  which  are  calculated  to  excite  sui'prise.  But  a  great  deal 
m'.st  be  taken  away  from  this  account  of  wit  before  it  is  sufficiently 
accurate  ;  for,  in  the  fii-st  place,  there  must  be  no  feehng  or  convic- 


RELATION  BEIWEEN  IDEAS.  219 

tion  of  tlie  utiliUj  of  the  relation  so  discovered.  If  you  go  to  sec 
a  large  cottou-mill,  tlie  manner  in  which  the  large  water-wheel  be- 
loAV  works  the  little  parts  of  the  machinery  seven  stories  high,  the 
relation  which  one  bears  to  another,  is  extremely  surprising  to  a 
person  unaccustomed  to  mechanics ;  but,  instead  of  feeling  as  you 
feel  at  a  piece  of  wit,  you  are  absorbed  in  the  contemplation  of  the 
utility  and  importance  of  such  relations — there  is  a  sort  of  rational 
approbation  mingled  with  your  surprise,  which  makes  the  ichole 
feeling  very  different  from  that  of  wit.  At  the  same  time,  if  we 
attend  very  accurately  to  our  feelings,  we  shall  perceive  that  the 
discovery  of  any  surprising  relation  whatever,  produces  some  slight 
sensation  of  wit.  AVhen  first  the  manner  in  which  a  steam-engine 
opens  and  shuts  its  own  valves  is  explained  to  me,  or  when  I  at 
first  perceive  the  ingenious  and  complicated  contrivances  of  any 
piece  of  machinery,  the  surprise  that  I  feel  at  the  discovery  of 
these  connections  has  always  something  in  it  which  resembles  the 
feeling  of  wit,  though  that  is  very  soon  extinguished  by  others  of 
a  very  different  natui-e.  Children,  who  view  the  different  parts 
of  a  machine  not  so  much  with  any  notions  of  its  utility,  feel  some- 
thing still  more  like  the  sensation  of  wit  when  first  they  perceive 
the  effect  which  one  part  produces  upon  another.  Show  a  child 
of  six  years  old,  that,  by  moving  the  treadle  of  a  knife-grinder's 
machine,  you  make  the  large  wheel  turn  round,  or  that  by  pressing 
the  spring  of  a  repeating-watch  you  make  the  watch  strike,  and 
you  pi'obably  raise  up  a  feeling  in  the  cliild's  mind  precisely  simi- 
lar to  that  of  wit.  There  is  a  mode  of  teaching  children  geography 
by  disjointed  parts  of  a  wooden  map,  which  they  fit  together.  I 
have  no  doubt  that  the  child,  in  finding  the  kingdom  or  republic 
which  fits  into  a  great  hole  in  the  wooden  sea,  feels  exactl}'  the 
sensation  of  wit.  Every  one  must  remember  that  fitting  the  in- 
viting projection  of  Crim  Tartary  into  the  Black  Sea  was  one  of 
the  greatest  delights  of  their  childhood ;  and  almost  all  children 
are  sure  to  scream  with  pleasure  at  the  discovery. 

The  relation  between  ideas  which  excite  surprise,  in  order  to  be 
witty,  must  not  excite  any  feeling  of  the  beautiful.  "  The  good 
man,"  says  a  Hindoo  epigram,  "  goes  not  upon  enmity,  but  i-ewards 
with  kindness  the  very  being  who  injures  him.  So  the  sandal- 
wood, while  it  is  felling,  imparts  to  the  edge  of  the  axe  its  aromatic 
flavour."     Now  here  is  a  relation  which  would  be  witty  if  it  were 


220  WIT    AND   IHE   BEAUTIFUL. 

not  beautiful :  the  relation  discovered  betwixt  the  falling  sandal- 
wood, and  the  returning  good  for  evil,  is  a  new  relation  which 
excites  surprise  ;  but  the  mere  surprise  at  the  relation,  is  swallowed 
up  by  the  contemplation  of  the  moral  beauty  of  the  thought,  which 
throws  the  mind  into  a  more  solemn  and  elevated  mood  than  is 
compatible  with  the  feeling  of  wit. 

It  would  not  be  a  difficult  thing  to  do  (and  if  the  limits  of  my 
lecture  allowed  I  would  do  it),  to  select  from  Cowley  and  Waller 
a  suite  of  passages,  in  order  to  show  the  effect  of  the  beautiful  in 
destroying  the  feeling  of  wit,  and  vice  versa.  First,  I  would  take 
a  passage  purely  witty,  in  which  the  mind  merely  contemplated 
the  singular  and  surprising  relation  of  the  ideas :  next,  a  passage 
where  the  admixture  of  some  beautiful  sentiment  —  the  excitation 
of  some  shglit  moral  feeling — arrested  the  mind  from  the  con- 
templation of  the  relation  between  the  ideas ;  then,  a  passage  in 
which  the  beautiful  overpowered  still  more  the  facetious,  till,  at 
last,  it  was  totally  destroyed. 

If  the  relation  between  the  ideas,  to  produce  wit,  must  not  be 
mingled  with  the  beautiful,  still  less  must  they  be  so  with  the 
sublime.  In  that  beautiful  passage  in  IMi*.  Campbell's  poem  of 
"  Lochiel,"  the  wizard  repeats  these  verses  —  which  were  in  every 
one's  mouth  when  fii'st  the  poem  was  written : — 

"  Lochiel !  Lochiel !  though  my  eyes  I  should  seal, 
Man  can  not  keep  secret  what  God  would  reveal 
'Tis  the  sunset  of  life  gives  me  mystical  lore, 
And  romiiHj  events  cast  their  shadows  before." 

Now  this  comparison  of  the  dark  uncertain  sort  of  prescience  of 
future  events  implied  by  the  gift  of  second  sight,  and  the  notice  of 
an  approaching  solid  body  by  the  previous  aj^proach  of  its  shadow, 
contains  a  new  and  striking  relation  ;  but  it  is  not  ivitty,  nor  would 
it  ever  have  been  considered  as  witty,  if  expressed  in  a  more  con- 
cise manner,  and  with  the  rapidity  of  conversation,  because  it  in- 
spires feelings  of  ii  much  higher  cast  than  those  of  wit,  and, 
instead  of  suffering  the  mind  to  dwell  upon  the  mere  relation  of 
ideas,  fills  it  with  a  sort  of  mysterious  awe,  and  gives  an  air  of 
sublimity  to  the  fabulous  power  of  prediction.  Every  one  knows 
the  Latin  line  on  the  miracle  at  the  marriage-supper  in  Cana  of 
Galilee  —  on  the  conversion  of  water  into  wine.     The  poet  says, 


THE   SUBLIME.  221 

"  The  modest  wate    -.aw  its  God,  and  blushed!"* 

Now,  in  my  mind,  that  sublimity  which  some  persons  discover  in 
this  passage  is  destroyed  by  its  wit ;  it  appears  to  me  witty,  and 
not  sublime.  I  have  no  g}-eat  feelings  excited  by  it,  and  can  per- 
fectly well  stop  to  consider  the  mere  relation  of  ideas.  I  hope  I 
need  not  add,  that  the  line,  if  it  produce  the  effect  of  a  witty  con- 
ceit, and  not  of  a  sublime  image,  is  perfectly  misplaced  and  irrev- 
erent: the  intent,  however,  of  the  poet,  was  imdouhtcdhj  to  be 
serious.  In  the  same  manner,  whenever  the  mind  is  not  left  to 
the  mere  surprise  excited  by  the  relation  of  ideas,  but  when  that 
relation  excites  any  powerful  emotion  —  as  those  of  the  sublime 
and  beautiful,  or  any  high  passion — as  anger  or  pity,  or  any  train 
of  reflections  upon  the  utility  of  the  relations,  the  feeling  of  wit  is 
always  diminished  or  destroyed.  It  seems  to  be  occasioned  by 
those  relations  of  ideas  which  excite  surpi'ise,  and  surprise  alone. 
Whenever  relations  excite  any  other  strong  feeling  as  well  as 
surprise,  the  wit  is  either  destroyed,  diminished,  or  the  two  co- 
existent feelings  of  wit  and  the  other  emotion  may,  by  careful 
reflection,  be  distinguished  from  each  other.  I  may  be  very 
wrong  (for  these  subjects  are  extremely  difficult),  but  I  know  no 
single  passage  in  any  author  which  is  at  once  beautiful  and  witty, 
or  sublime  and  witty.  I  know  innumerable  passages  which  are 
intended  to  be  beautiful  or  sublime,  and  which  are  merely  witty ; 
and  I  know  many  passages  in  which  the  relation  of  ideas  is  very 
new  and  surprising,  and  which  are  not  witty  because  they  are 
beautiful  and  sublime.  Lastly,  when  the  effect  of  wit  is  height- 
ened by  strong  sense  and  useful  truth,  we  may  perceive  in  the 
mind  what  part  of  the  pleasure  arises  from  the  mere  relation  of 
ideas,  what  from  the  utility  of  the  precept ;  and  many  instances 
might  be  pi'oduced,  where  the  importance  and  utility  of  the  thing 
said,  prevent  the  mind  from  contemplating  the  mere  relation,  and 
considering  it  as  wit.  For  example :  in  that  apophthegm  of  Roche- 
foucault,  that  hypocrisy  is  a  homage  which  vice  renders  to  virtue, 
the  image  is  witty,  but  all  attention  to  the  mere  wit  is  swallowed 

*  C-ampbell  (Specimens  of  British  Poets)  assigns  the  Latin  line  to  Cra- 
shaw : — 

"Lympha  pudica  Deum  vidit  et  erubuit." 

The  conceit  had  been  previously  employed  by  Vida.  It  is  traced  by  a  writer 
in  Notes  and  Queries.     Oct.  16,  1852. 


222  INSTANCES   OF  WIT. 

up  in  the  justness  and  value  of  the  observation.  So  that  I  think 
I  have  some  colour  for  saying,  that  wit  is  produced  by  those  rela- 
tions between  ideas  which  excite  surprise,  and  surprise  only. 
Observe,  I  am  only  defining  the  causes  of  a  certain  feeling  in  the 
mind  called  wit ;  I  can  no  more  define  the  feeling  itself,  than  I  can 
define  the  flavour  of  venison.  We  all  seem  to  partake  of  one 
and  the  other,  with  a  very  great  degree  of  satisfaction ;  but  why 
each  feehng  is  what  it  is,  and  nothing  else,  I  am  sui-e  I  cannot 
pretend  to  determine. 

Louis  XIV.  was  exceedingly  molested  by  the  solicitations  of  a 
general  officer  at  the  levee,  and  cried  out,  loud  enough  to  be  over- 
heard, "  That  gentleman  is  the  most  troublesome  officer  in  the 
whole  army."  "  Your  Majesty's  enemies  have  said  the  same  thing 
more  than  once,"  was  the  answer.  The  wit  of  this  answer  consists 
in  the  sudden  relation  discovered  in  his  assent  to  the  King's  invec- 
tive and  his  own  defence.  By  admitting  the  King's  observation, 
he  seems,  at  first  sight,  to  be  subscribing  to  the  imputation  against 
him ;  whereas,  in  reahty,  he  effaces  it  by  this  very  means.  A 
sudden  relation  is  discovered  where  none  was  suspected.  Voltaire, 
in  speakmg  of  the  effi^ct  of  epithets  in  weakening  style,  said,  that 
the  adjectives  were  the  gi-eatest  enemies  of  the  substantives, 
though  they  agreed  in  gender,  number,  and  in  cases.  Here,  again, 
it  is  very  obvious  tliat  a  relation  is  discovered  which,  upon  first 
observation,  does  not  appear  to  exist.  These  instances  may  be 
multiplied  to  any  extent.  A  gentleman  at  Paris,  who  lived  very 
unhappily  with  his  wife,  used,  for  twenty  years  together,  to  pass 
his  evenings  at  the  house  of  another  lady,  who  was  very  agreeable, 
and  drew  together  a  pleasant  society.  His  wife  died;  and  his 
friends  all  advised  him  to  marry  the  lady  in  whose  society  he  had 
found  so  much  pleasure.  He  said,  no,  he  certainly  should  not,  for 
that,  if  he  married  her,  he  should  not  know  where  to  spend  his 
evenings.  Here  we  are  suddenly  surprised  with  the  idea  that  the 
method  proposed  of  securing  his  comfort  may  possibly  prove  the 
most  effectual  method  of  destroying  it.  At  least,  to  enjoy  the 
pleasantry  of  the  reply,  we  view  it  through  his  mode  of  thinking, 
who  had  not  been  very  fortunate  in  the  connection  established  by 
his  first  marriage.  I  have,  in  consequence  of  the  definition  I  have 
printed  of  Avit  in  the  cards  of  the  Institution,  passed  one  of  the 
most  polemical  weeks  that  ever  I  remember  to  have  spent  in  my 


RELATIONS  BETWEEN   FACTS.  223 

life.  I  tlnnk,  however,  that  if  my  words  are  imdersfood  in  their 
fair  sense,  I  am  not  wrong.  I  have  said,  surjirising  relations  be- 
tween ideas — not  between  facts.  The  difference  is  very  great. 
A  man  may  tell  me  he  sees  a  fiery  meteor  on  the  surfiice  of  the 
sea :  he  has  no  merit  in  the  discovery  —  it  is  no  extraordinary  act 
of  mind  in  him — any  one  who  has  eyes  can  ascertain  this  relation 
of  facts  as  well,  if  it  really  exist;  but  to  discover  a  surprising 
relation  in  ideas,  is  an  act  of  power  in  the  discoverer,  in  which,  if 
his  wit  be  good,  he  exceeds  the  greater  part  of  mankind :  so  that 
the  very  terms  I  have  adopted,  imply  comparison  and  superiority 
of  mind.  The  discovery  of  any  relation  of  ideas  exciting  pure 
surprise  involves  the  notion  of  such  superiority,  and  enhances  the 
surprise.  To  discover  relations  between  facts  exciting  pure  sur- 
prise, involves  the  notion  of  no  such  superiority;  for  any  man 
could  ascertain  that  a  calf  had  two  heads  if  it  had  two  heads : 
therefore,  I  again  repeat,  let  any  man  show  me  that  which  is  an 
acknowledged  proof  of  wit,  and  I  believe  I  could  analyze  the  pleas- 
ure experienced  from  it  into  surprise,  partly  occasioned  by  the 
unexpected  relation  established,  partly  by  the  display  of  talent  in 
discovering  it;  and,  putting  this  position  synthetically,  I  would 
say,  whenever  there  is  a  superior  act  of  intelligence  in  discovering 
a  relation  between  ideas,  which  relation  excites  surprise,  and  no 
other  high  emotion,  the  mind  will  have  the  feeling  of  wit.  ^Yliy 
is  it  not  witty  to  find  a  gold  watch  and  seals  hanging  upon  a  hedge  ? 
Because  it  is  a  mere  relation  of  facts  discovered  without  any  effort 
of  mind,  and  not  (as  I  have  said  in  my  definition),  a  relation  of 
ideas.  Why  is  it  not  witty  to  discover  the  relation  between  the 
moon  and  the  tides  ?  Because  it  raises  other  notions  than  those  of 
mere  surprise.  "Why  are  not  all  the  extravagant  relations  in 
Garagantua  witty  ?  Because  they  are  merely  odd  and  extrava- 
gant ;  aiid  mere  oddity  and  extravagance  is  too  easy  to  excite  sur- 
prise. "Why  is  it  witty,  in  one  of  Addison's  plays,*  where  the 
undertaker  reproves  one  of  his  mourners  for  laughing  at  a  funeral, 
and  says  to  him,  "  You  rascal,  you !  I  have  been  raising  your 
wages  for  these  two  years  past,  upon  condition  that  you  should 

*  Not  Addison,  but  Steele,  in  the  comedy  of  "  The  Funeral :  or.  Grief  A-La- 
Mode,''  where'Sable  addresses  one  of  his  men  :  "  Did  not  I  give  you  ten,  thea 
fifteen,  now  twenty  shillings  a  week,  to  be  sorrowful  ?  and  the  more  I  give 
you,  I  think,  the  gladder  you  are." 


224  WIT    CULTIVABLE. 

appeal"  more  sorrowful,  and  the  higher  wages  you  receive  the 
happier  you  look !"  Here  is  a  relation  between  ideas,  the  dis- 
covery of  which  hnplies  superior  intelligence,  and  excites  no  other 
emotion  than  surprise. 


WIT  A    CULTIVABLE    FACULTY. 

It  is  imagined  that  wit  is  a  sort  of  inexplicable  visitation,  that 
it  comes  and  goes  with  the  rapidity  of  lightning,  and  that  it  is  quite 
as  unattainable  as  beauty  or  just  proportion.  I  am  so  much  of  a 
contraiy  way  of  thinking,  that  I  am  convinced  a  man  might  sit 
down  as  systematically,  and  as  successfully  to  the  study  of  wit. 
as  he  might  to  the  study  of  mathematics :  and  I  would  answer  for 
it,  that,  by  giving  up  only  six  hours  a  day  to  being  witty,  he 
should  come  on  prodigiously  before  midsummer,  so  that  his  friends 
should  hardly  know  him  again.  For  what  is  there  to  hinder  the 
mind  from  gradually  acquiring  a  habit  of  attending  to  the  lighter 
relations  of  ideas  in  which  wit  consists?  Punning  grows  upon 
everybody,  and  punning  is  the  wit  of  words.  I  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  it  is  so  easy  to  acquire  a  habit  of  discovering  new  relations 
in  ideas  as  in  words,  but  the  difficulty  is  not  so  much  greater  as  to 
render  it  insuperable  to  habit.  One  man  is  unquestionably  much 
better  calculated  for  it  by  nature  than  another:  but  association, 
which  gradually  makes  a  bad  speaker  a  good  one,  might  give  a 
man  wit  who  had  it  not,  if  any  man  chose  to  be  so  absurd  as  to 
sit  down  to  acquire  it. 


PUNS. 

I  have  mentioned  puns.  They  are,  I  believe,  what  I  have 
denominated  them — the  wit  of  words.  They  are  exactly  the  same 
to  words  which  wit  is  to  ideas,  and  consist  in  the  sudden  discovery 
of  relations  in  language.  A  pun,  to  be  perfect  in  its  kind,  should 
contain  two  distinct  meanings ;  the  one  common  and  obvious ;  the 
other,  more  remote :  and  in  the  notice  which  the  mind  takes  of  the 
relation  between  these  two  sets  of  words,  and  in  the  surprise  which 
that  relation  excites,  the  pleasure  of  a  pun  consists.  Miss  Hamil- 
ton, in  her  book  on  Education,  mentions  the,  instance  of  a  boy  so 
very  neglectful,  that  he  could  never  be  brought  to  read  the  woid 
patriarchs ;  but  whenever  he  met  with  it  he  always  pronounced  it 


PUNNING.  225 

partridges.  A  friend  of  the  wriler  observed  to  her,  that  it  could 
hai'dly  be  cousi  iered  as  a  mere  piece  of  negligence,  for  it  appeared 
to  him  that  the  boy,  in  calling  them  partridges,  was  making  gatne 
of  the  patriarchs.  Now  here  ai'e  two  distinct  meanings  contained 
in  the  same  phrase  :  for  to  make  game  of  the  patriarchs  is  to  laugh 
at  them ;  or  to  make  game  of  them  is,  by  a  very  extravagant  and 
laughable  sort  of  ignorance  of  words,  to  rank  them  among  pheasants, 
partridges,  and  other  such  delicacies,  which  the  law  takes  under  its 
protection  and  calls  gmne  ;  and  the  whole  pleasure  derived  from 
this  pun  consists  in  the  sudden  discovery  that  two  such  dift'erent 
meanings  are  referable  to  one  form  of  expression.  I  have  very 
little  to  say  about  puns  ;  they  are  in  very  bad  repute  and  so  they 
ought  to  be.  The  wit  of  language  is  so  miserably  inferior  to  the 
•wit  of  ideas,  that  it  is  very  deservedly  driven  out  of  good  com- 
pany. Sometimes,  indeed,  a  pun  makes  its  appearance  which  seems  ^ 
for  a  moment  to  redeem  its  species ;  but  we  must  not  be  deceived 
by  them ;  it  is  a  radically  bad  race  of  wit.  By  unremitting  per- 
secution, it  has  been  at  last  got  under,  and  di-iven  into  cloisters, 
—  from  whence  it  must  never  again  be  suffered  to  emerge  into  the 
light  of  the  world.  One  invaluable  blessing  produced  by  the  ban- 
ishment of  punning  is,  an  immediate  reduction  of  the  number  of 
wits.  It  is  a  wit  of  so  low  an  order,  and  in  which  some  sort 
of  progress  is  so  easily  made,  that  the  number  of  those  endowed 
with  the  gift  of  wit  would  be  nearly  equal  to  those  endowed  with 
the  gift  of  speech.  The  condition  of  putting  together  ideas  in 
order  to  be  witty  operates  much  in  the  same  salutary  manner  as 
the  condition  of  finding  rhymes  in  poetry ;  —  it  reduces  the  num- 
ber of  performers  to  those  who  have  vigour  enough  to  overcome 
incipient  difficulties,  and  makes  a  sort  of  provision  that  that  which 
need  not  be  done  at  all,  should  be  done  well  whenever  it  is  done. 
For  we  may  observe,  that  mankind  are  always  more  fastidious 
about  that  which  is  pleasing,  than  they  are  about  that  which  is 
useful.  A  commonplace  piece  of  morality  is  much  more  easily 
pardoned  than  a  commonplace  piece  of  poetry  or  of  wit;  because 
it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the  well-being  of  society  that  the 
rules  of  moraUty  should  be  frequently  repeated  and  enforced; 
and  though  in  any  individual  instance  the  thing  may  be  badly  done, 
the  sacred  necessity  of  the  practice  itself,  atones  in  some  degree 
for  the  individual  failure ;  but  as  there  is  no  absolute  necessity 

10* 


226  ABOVE  EIDICULE. 

that  men  should  b3  either  wits  or  poets,  we  are  less  inclined  to 
tolerate  their  mediocrity  in  superfluities.  If  a  man  have  or- 
dinary chairs  and  tables,  no  one  notices  it ;  but  if  he  stick  vulgar 
gaudy  pictures  on  his  walls,  which  he  need  not  have  at  all,  every 
one  laughs  at  liim  for  liis  folly. 


A    SARCASM. 

A  SARCASM  (which  is  another  species  of  wit)  generally  consists 
in  the  obliquity  of  the  invective.  It  must  not  be  direct  assertion, 
but  something  established  by  inference  and  analogy ;  —  something 
which  the  mind  does  not  at  first  perceive,  but  in  the  discovery  of 
which  it  experiences  the  pleasure  of  surprise.  A  true  sarcasm  is 
like  a  sword-stick  —  it  appears,  at  first  sight,  to  be  much  more  in- 
nocent than  it  really  is,  till,  all  of  a  sudden,  there  leaps  something 
out  of  it  —  sharp,  and  deadly,  and  incisive  —  which  makes  you 
tremble  and  recoih 


SUPERIORITY    TO    RIDICULE. 

I  KNOW  of  no  pi'inciple  which  it  is  of  more  importance  to  fix  in 
the  minds  of  young  people  than  that  of  the  most  determined  resist- 
ance to  the  encroachments  of  ridicule.  Give  up  to  the  world, 
and  to  the  ridicule  with  which  the  world  enforces  its  dominion, 
every  trifling  question  of  manner  and  appearance :  it  is  to  toss 
courage  and  firmness  to  the  winds,  to  combat  with  the  mass  upon 
such  subjects  as  these.  But  learn  from  the  earliest  days  to  inure 
your  principles  against  the  perils  of  ridicule :  you  can  no  more 
exercise  your  reason,  if  you  live  in  the  constant  dread  of  laughter, 
than  you  can  enjoy  your  life,  if  you  are  in  the  constant  terror  of 
death.  If  you  think  it  right  to  differ  from  the  times,  and  to  make 
a  stand  for  any  valuable  point  of  morals,  do  it,  however  rustic, 
however  antiquated,  however  pedantic,  it  may  appear ;  —  do  it, 
not  for  insolence,  but  seriously  and  grandly  —  as  a  man  who  wore 
a  soul  of  his  own  in  his  bosom,  and  did  not  wait  till  it  was 
breathed  into  him  by  the  breath  of  fashion.  Let  men  call  you 
mean,  if  you  know  you  are  just ;  hypocritical,  if  you  are  honestly 
religious  ;  pusillanimous,  if  you  feel  that  you  are  firm :  resistance 
soon  converts  unprincipled  wit  into  sincere  respect ;  and  no  after 


HUMOUR.  227 

time  can  tear  from  you  those  feelings  which  every  man  carries 
within  him  who  has  made  a  noble  and  successful  exertion  in  a 
vii'tuous  cause. 


NATURE    OF   HUMOUR.* 

HoBBES  defines  laughter  to  be  "  a  sudden  glory,  arising  from 
a  sudden  conception  of  some  eminency  in  ourselves,  by  comparison 
with  infirmity  of  others,  or  our  own  former  infirmity."  By  in- 
jirmity  he  must  mean,  I  presume,  marked  and  decided  inferiority, 
whether  accidental  and  momentary,  or  natural  and  permanent. 
He  cannot,  of  course,  mean  by  it,  what  we  usually  denominate  in- 
firmity of  body  or  mind ;  for  it  must  be  obvious,  at  the  first  mo- 
ment, that  humour  has  a  much  wider  range  than  this.  If  we  were 
to  see  a  little  man  walking  in  the  streets  with  a  hat  half  as  big  as 
an  umbrella,  we  should  laugh ;  and  that  laughter  certainly  could 
not  be  ascribed  to  the  infirmities  either  of  his  body  or  mind :  for 
his  diminutive  figure,  without  his  disproportionate  hat,  I  shall  sup- 
pose by  hypothesis,  to  be  such  as  would  excite  no  laughter  at  all ; 
— and,  indeed,  an  extraordinary  large  man,  with  a  hat  such  as  is 
worn  by  boys  of  twelve  years  old,  would  be  an  object  quite  as 
ludicrous. 

Taking,  therefore,  the  langiiage  of  Hobbes  to  mean  the  sudden 
discovery  of  any  inferiority,  it  will  be  very  easy  to  show  that 
such  is  not  the  explanation  of  that  laughter  excited  by  humour : 
for  I  may  discover  suddenly  that  a  person  has  lost  half-a-crown — 
or,  that  his  tooth  aches — or,  that  his  house  is  not  so  well  built,  or 
his  coat  not  so  well  made,  as  mine ;  and  yet  none  of  these  dis- 
coveries give  me  the  slightest  sensation  of  the  humourous.  If  it 
be  suggested  that  these  proofs  of  inferiority  are  very  slight,  the 
theory  of  Hobbes  is  still  more  weakened,  by  recurring  to  greater 
instances  of  inferiority :  for  the  sudden  information  that  any  one 
of  iny  acquaintance  has  broken  his  leg,  or  is  completely  ruined  in 
his  fortunes,  has  decidedly  very  little  of  humour  in  it; — at  least  it 
is  not  very  customary  to  be  thrown  into  paroxysms  of  laughter 
by  such  sort  of  intelligence.  It  is  clear,  then,  that  there  are 
many  instances  of  the  sudden  discovery  of  inferiorities  and  infirm- 

*  This  passage  and  the  following  are  from  the  Lecture  on  Wit  and  Ha- 
mour,  Part  II 


228  INCONGRUITY. 

ities  in  others,  which  excite  no  laughter ;  and,  therefore,  pride  ia 
not  the  explanation  of  laughter  excited  by  the  humourous.  It  is 
true,  the  object  of  laughter  is  always  inferior  to  us ;  but  then  the 
converse  is  not  true — that  every  one  who  is  inferior  to  us  is  an 
object  of  hiughter :  therefore,  as  some  inferiority  is  i-idiculous,  and 
other  inferiority  not  ridiculous,  we  must,  in  order  to  explain  the 
nature  of  the  humourous,  endeavour  to  discover  the  discriminating 
cause. 

This  discriminating  cause  is  incongrxdty,  or  the  conjunction  of 
objects  and  circumstances  not  usually  combined — and  the  con- 
junction of  which  is  either  useless,  or  what  in  the  common  estima- 
tion of  men  would  be  considered  as  rather  troublesome,  and  not  to 
be  desired.  To  see  a  young  officer  of  eighteen  years  of  age  come 
into  company  in  full  uniform,  and  with  such  a  wig  as  is  worn  by 
grave  and  respectable  clergymen  advanced  in  years,  would  make 
every  body  laugh,  because  it  certainly  is  a  very  unusual  combina- 
tion of  objects,  and  such  as  would  not  atone  for  its  novelty  by  any 
particular  purpose  of  utihty  to  which  it  was  subservient.  It  is  a 
complete  mstance  of  incongruity.  Add  ten  years  to  the  age  of 
this  incongruous  officer,  the  incongruity  would  be  very  faintly 
diminished; — make  him  eighty  years  of  age,  and  a  celebrated 
mihtary  character  of  the  last  reign,  and  the  incongruity  almost 
entirely  vanishes :  I  am  not  sure  that  we  should  not  be  rather 
more  disposed  to  respect  the  peculiarity  than  to  laugh  at  it.  As 
you  increase  the  incongruity,  you  increase  the  humour ;  as  you 
dimmish  it,  you  diminish  the  humour.  If  a  tradesman  of  a  cor- 
pulent and  respectable  appearance,  with  habiliments  somewhat 
ostentatious,  were  to  sUde  down  gently  into  the  mud,  and  decor- 
ate a  pea-green  coat,  I  am  afraid  we  should  all  have  the  barbarity 
to  laugh.  If  his  hat  and  wig,  like  treacherous  servants,  were  to 
desert  their  falling  master,  it  certainly  would  not  diminish  our 
propensity  to  laugh ;  but  if  he  were  to  fall  into  a  violent  passion, 
and  abuse  everybody  about  him,  nobody  could  possibly  resist  the 
incongruity  of  a  pea-green  tradesman,  very  respectable,  sitting  in 
the  mud,  and  threatening  all  the  passers-by  with  the  effects  of  his 
-wrath.  Here,  every  incident  heightens  the  humour  of  the  scene : 
-—the  gayety  of  his  tunic,  the  general  respectability  of  his  ap- 
pearance, the  rills  of  muddy  water  which  trickle  down  his  cheeks, 
imd  the  harmless  violence  of  his  rage !     But  if,  instead  of  this,  we 


REPETITION.  229 

were  to  observe  a  dustman  falling  into  tne  mud,  it  would  liardly 
attract  any  attention,  because  the  opposition  of  ideas  is  so  ti-ifling, 
and  the  incongruity  so  slight. 

Surprise  is  as  essential  to  humour  as  it  is  to  wit.  In  going  into 
a  foreign  country  f  jr  the  first  time,  we  are  exceedingly  struck 
with  the  absurd  appearance  of  some  of  the  ordinary  characters  we 
meet  with :  a  very  short  time,  however,  completely  reconciles  us 
to  the  phenomena  of  French  abbes  and  French  postilions,  and  all 
the  variety  of  figures  so  remote  from  those  we  are  accustomed  to, 
and  which  surprise  us  so  much  at  our  first  acquaintance  with  that 
country.  I  do  not  mean  to  say,  either  of  one  class  of  the  ridicu- 
lous or  of  the  other,  that  perfect  novelty  is  ahsolutely  a  necessary 
ingredient  to  the  production  of  any  degi-ee  of  pleasure,  but  that  the 
pleasure  arising  from  humour  diminishes,  as  the  surprise  diminish- 
es ;  it  is  less  at  the  second  exhibition  of  any  piece  of  humour  than 
at  the  first,  less  at  the  tliird  than  the  second,  till  at  last  it  becomes 
trite  and  disgusting.  A  piece  of  humour  will,  however,  always 
bear  repetition  much  better  than  a  piece  of  wit ;  because,  as  hu- 
mour depends  in  some  degree  on  manner,  there  will  probably  al- 
ways be  in  that  manner,  something  sufficiently  different  from  what 
it  was  before,  to  prevent  the  disagreeable  effects  of  complete  same- 
ness. If  I  say  a  good  thing  to-day,  and  repeat  it  again  to-morrow 
in  another  company,  the  flash  of  to-day  is  as  much  like  the  flash  of 
to-morrow  as  the  flash  of  one  musket  is  like  the  flash  of  another ;  but 
if  I  tell  a  humourous  story,  there  are  a  thousand  little  diversities 
in  my  voice,  manner,  language,  and  gestures,  which  make  it  rather 
a  difierent  thing  from  what  it  was  before,  and  mfuse  a  tmge  of 
novelty  into  the  repeated  narrative. 

It  is  by  no  means,  however,  sufficient,  to  say  of  humour,  that  it 
is  incongruity  which  excites  surpi-ise ;  the  same  limits  are  neces- 
sary here  which  I  have  before  affixed  to  wit — it  must  excite  sur- 
prise, and  nothing  but  surprise ;  for  the  moment  it  calls  into  action 
any  other  high  and  impetuous  emotion,  all  sense  of  the  humourous 
is  immediately  at  an  end.  For,  to  return  again  to  our  friend 
dressed  in  green,  whom  we  left  in  the  mud — suppose,  instead  of 
a  common,  innocent  tumble,  he  had  experienced  a  very  severe 
fall,  and  we  discovered  that  he  had  broken  a  hmb  ;  our  laughter 
is  immediately  extinguished,  and  converted  into  a  lively  feeling  of 
compassi(Mi.     The  incongruity  is  precisely  as  great  as  it  was  be- 


230  SUBJECTS   FOR   HUMOUR. 

fore ;  but  as  it  has  excited  another  feeling  not  compatible  with  the 
ridiculous,  all  mixture  of  the  humourous  is  at  end. 

The  sense  of  the  humourous  is  as  incompatible  with  tenderness 
and  respect  as  with  compassion.  No  man  would  laugh  to  see  a 
little  child  fall ;  and  he  would  1 2  shocked  to  see  such  an  accident 
happen  to  an  old  man,  or  a  woman,  or  to  his  father !  It  is  an  odd 
ease  to  put,  but  I  should  like  to  know  if  any  man  living  could  have 
laughed  if  he  had  seen  Sir  Isaac  Newton  rolling  in  the  mud  ?  I 
beUeve  that  not  only  Senior  Wranglers  and  Senior  Optimi  would 
have  run  to  his  assistance,  but  that  dustmen,  and  carmen,  and 
coal-heavers  would  have  run  and  picked  liim  up,  and  set  him  to 
rights.  It  is  a  beautiful  thing  to  observe  the  boundaries  which, 
nature  has  affixed  to  the  ridiculous,  and  to  notice  how  soon  it  is 
swallowed  up  by  the  more  illustrious  feelings  of  our  "minds. 
Where  is  the  heai't  so  hard  that  could  bear  to  see  the  awkward 
resources  and  contrivances  of  the  poor  turned  into  ridicule  ? 
Wlio  could  laugh  at  the  fractured,  ruined  body  of  a  soldier? 
Who  is  so  wicked  as  to  amuse  himself  with  the  infirmities  of  ex- 
treme old  age  ?  or  to  find  subject  for  humour  in  the  weakness  of 
a  perishing,  dissolving  body  ?  Who  is  there  that  does  not  feel 
himself  disposed  to  overlook  the  little  peculiai'ities  of  the  truly 
great  and  wise,  ^md  to  throw  a  veil  over  that  ridicule  which  they 
have  redeemed  by  the  magnitude  of  their  talents,  and  the  splendour 
of  their  virtues?  Who  ever  thinks  of  turning  into  ridicule  our 
great  and  ardent  hope  of  a  world  to  come  ?  Whenever  the  man 
of  humour  meddles  with  these  things,  he  is  astonished  to  find,  that 
in  all  the  great  feelings  of  their  nature  the  mass  of  mankind  al- 
ways think  and  act  ai-ight; — that  they  are  ready  enough  to  laugh 
— but  that  they  are  quite  as  ready  to  drive  away  with  indignation 
and  contempt,  the  light  fool  who  comes  with  the  feather  of  Avit  to 
crumble  the  bulwarks  of  truth,  and  to  beat  down  the  Temples  of 
God ! 

So,  then,  this  turns  out  to  be  the  nature  of  humour ;  that  it  is 
incongruity  which  creates  surprise,  and  only  surprise.  Tiy  the 
most  notorious  and  classical  instances  of  humour  by  this  rule,  and 
you  will  find  it  succeed.  K  you  find  incongruities  which  create 
surprise  and  are  not  humourous,  it  is  always,  I  believe,  because 
they  are  accompanied  with  some  other  feeling — emotion,  or  an 
interesting   train  of  thought,  beside  surprise.     Find    an  incon- 


BUFFOONERY.  231 

gruity  which  creates  surprise,  and  surprise  only,  and,  if  it  be  not 
humourous,  I  am,  wliat  I  very  often  am,  completely  wrong ;  and 
this  theory  is  what  theories  very  often  are,  unfounded  in  fact. 

Most  men,  I  observe,  are  of  opinion  that  humour  is  entirely 
confined  to  character;  —  and  if  you  choose  to  confine  the  word  hu- 
mour to  those  instances  of  the  ridiculous  which  are  excited  by 
character,  you  may  do  so  if  you  please — this  is  not  worth  con- 
tending. All  that  I  wish  to  show  is,  that  this  species  of  feeling  is 
produced  by  something  beside  character ;  and  if  you  allow  it  to 
be  the  same  feeling,  I  am  satisfied,  and  you  may  call  it  by  what 
name  you  please.  One  of  the  most  laughable  scenes  I  ever  saw 
in  my  life  was,  the  complete  overturning  of  a  very  large  table, 
with  all  the  diuner  upon  it — which  I  believe  one  or  two  gentlemen 
in  this  room  remember  as  well  as  myself  What  of  character  is 
there  in  seeing  a  roasted  turkey  sprawling  on  the  floor  ?  or  ducks 
lying  in  different  parts  of  the  room,  covered  with  trembling  frag- 
ments of  jelly  ?  It  is  impossible  to  avoid  laughing  at  such  ab- 
surdities, because  the  incongruities  they  invoh^'e  are  so  very  great ; 
though  they  have  no  more  to  do  with  character  than  they  have 
with  chemistry.  A  thousand  little  circumstances  happen  every 
day  which  excite  violent  laughter,  but  have  no  sort  of  reference  to 
character.  The  laughter  is  excited  by  throwing  inanimate  objects 
into  strange  and  incongruous  positions.  Now,  I  am  quite  unable, 
by  attending  to  what  passes  in  my  own  mind,  to  say,  that  these 
classes  of  sensations  are  not  alike :  they  may  differ  in  degree,  for 
the  incongruous  observed  of  things  living,  is  always  more  striking 
than  the  incongruous  observed  in  things  inanimate ;  but  there  is 
an  incongruous  not  observable  in  character,  wliich  produces  the 
feeling  of  humour. 


BUFFOONERY   AND    ITS   ASSOCIATES. 

Buffoonery  is  voluntary  incongruity.  To  play  the  buffoon, 
is  to  counterfeit  some  peculiarity  incongruous  enough  to  excite 
laughter:  not  incongruities  of  mind,  for  this  is  a  humour  of  a 
higher  class,  and  constitutes  comic  acting;  but  incongruities  of 
body— ^imitating  a  drunken  man,  or  a  clown,  or  a  person  with  a 
hunched  back,  or  puffing  out  the  cheeks  as  the  lower  sort  of 
comic  actors  do  upon  the  stage.     Bufibonery  is  general  in  its  imi- 


232  IRISH  BULLS. 

tations ;  mimicry  is  particulai',  and  seizes  on  the  incongruous  in 
individual  characters.  I  think  we  must  say,  that  mimicry  is  al- 
ways employed  upon  defects :  a  good  voice,  a  gentleman-like  ap- 
pearance, and  rational,  agreeable  manners,  can  never  be  the  sub- 
ject of  mimicry  ; — they  may  be  exactly  represented  and  imitated, 
but  nobody  would  call  this  mimicry,  as  the  word  always  means 
the  representation  of  defects.  Parody  is  the  adaptation  of  the 
same  thoughts  to  other  subjects.  Burlesque  is  that  species  of 
parody,  or  adaptation  of  thoughts  to  other  subjects,  which  is  in- 
tended to  make  the  original  ridiculous.  Pope  has  parodied  several 
Odes  of  Horace ;  Johnson  has  parodied  Juvenal ;  Cervantes  has 
burlesqued  the  old  romances. 


BULLS. 


A  BULL — which  must  by  no  means  be  passed  over  in  this  re- 
capitulation of  the  family  of  wit  and  humour — a  bull  is  exactly 
the  counterpart  of  a  witticism :  for  as  wit  discovers  real  relations 
that  are  not  apparent,  bulls  admit  apparent  relations  that  are  not 
real.  The  pleasure  arising  from  bulls,  proceeds  from  our  surprise 
at  suddenly  discovering  two  things  to  be  dissimilar  in  which  a 
resemblance  might  have  been  suspected.  The  same  doctrine  Avill 
apply  to  wit  and  bulls  in  action.  Practical  wit  discovers  connec- 
tion or  relation  between  actions,  in  which  duller  understandings 
discover  none ;  and  practical  bulls  originate  from  an  apparent 
relation  between  two  actions  which  more  correct  understandings 
immediately  perceive  to  have  none  at  all.  In  the  late  rebellion 
in  Ireland,  the  rebels,  who  had  conceived  a  high  degree  of  indig- 
nation against  some  great  banker,  passed  a  resolution  that  they 
would  burn  his  notes;  —  which  they  accordingly  did,  with  great 
assiduity ;  forgetting,  that  in  burning  his  notes  they  were  destroy- 
ing his  debts,  and  that  for  every  note  which  went  into  the  flames, 
a  correspondent  value  went  into  the  banker's  pocket.  A  gentle- 
man, in  speaking  of  a  nobleman's  wife,  of  great  rank  and  fortune, 
lamented  very  much  that  she  had  no  children.  A  medical  gentle- 
man who  was  present  observed,  that  to  have  no  children  was  a 
great  misfortune,  but  he  thought  he  had  remarked  it  was  heredi- 
tary in  some  famihes.     Take  any  instances  of  this  branch  of  the 


DANGERS  OF  WIT.  233 

ridiculous,  and  you  will  always  find  an  apparent  relation  of  ideas 
leading  to  a  complptp  inconsistency. 


CHARADES. 

I  SHALL  say  nothing  of  charades,  and  such  sorts  of  unpardon- 
able trumpery :  if  chai'ades  are  made  at  all,  they  should  be  made 
without  benefit  of  clergy,  the  offender  should  instantly  be  hurried 
off  to  execution,  and  be  cut  off  in  the  middle  of  his  dullness,  with- 
out being  allowed  to  explain  to  the  executioner  why  his  first  is 
like  his  second,  or  what  is  the  resemblance  between  his  fourth  and 
his  ninth. 


DANGERS    AND    ADVANTAGES    OF    WIT. 

I  WISH,  after  all  I  have  said  about  wit  and  humour,  I  could  sat- 
sify  myself  of  their  good  effects  upon  the  character  and  disposition ; 
but  I  am  convinced  the  probable  tendency  of  both  is,  to  corrupt 
the  understanding  and  the  heart.  I  am  not  speaking  of  wit  where 
it  is  kept  down  by  more  serious  quaUties  of  mind,  and  thrown  into 
the  background  of  the  picture ;  but  where  it  stands  out  boldly  and 
emphatically,  and  is  evidently  the  master  quality  in  any  j^articular 
mind.  Professed  wits,  though  they  are  generally  courted  for  the 
amusement  they  afford,  are  seldom  respected  for  the  qualities  they 
possess.  The  habit  of  seeing  things  in  a  witty  point  of  view,  in- 
creases and  makes  incursions  from  its  own  proper  regions,  upon 
principles  and  opinions  which  are  ever  held  sacred  by  the  wise 
and  good.  A  witty  man  is  a  dramatic  performer ;  in  process  of 
time,  he  can  no  more  exist  without  applause,  than  he  can  exist 
without  air ;  if  his  audience  be  small,  or  if  they  are  inattentive,  or 
if  a  ncAv  wit  defrauds  him  of  any  portion  of  his  admiration,  it  is  all 
over  with  him  —  he  sickens,  and  is  extinguished.  The  applauses 
of  the  theati-e  on  which  he  performs  are  so  essential  to  him  that 
he  must  obtain  them  at  the  expense  of  decency,  friendship,  and 
good  feeling.  It  must  always  be  prohahle,  too,  that  a  mere  wit  is 
a  person  of  light  and  frivolous  understanding.  His  business  is  not  to 
discover  relations  of  ideas  that  are  useful,  and  have  a  real  influence 
npon  life,  but  to  discover  the  more  trifling  relations  which  are  only 
amusing ;  he  never  looks  at  things  with  the  naked  eye  of  common 


234  AN   EXTRAOKDINAEY   MAN. 

sense,  but  is  always  gazing  at  tlie  world  through  a  Claude  Lor- 
raine glass  — discovering  a  thousand  appearances  which  are  created 
only  by  tht)  instrument  of  inspection,  and  covering  every  object 
with  factitious  and  unnatural  colours.  In  short,  the  chai'acter  of  a 
mere  wit  it  is  impossible  to  consider  as  very  amiable,  very  respec- 
table, or  very  safe.  So  far  the  world,  in  judging  of  wit  where  it 
has  swallowed  up  all  other  qualities,  judge  aright ;  but  I  doubt  if 
they  are  sufficiently  indulgent  to  this  faculty  where  it  exists  in  a 
lesser  degree,  and  as  one  out  of  many  other  ingredients  of  the  un- 
derstanding. There  is  an  association  in  men's  minds  between  dull- 
ness and  wisdom,  amusement  and  folly,  which  has  a  very  powerful 
influence  in  decision  upon  character,  and  is  not  overcome  without 
considerable  difficulty.  The  reason  is,  that  the  outward  signs  of  a 
dull  man  and  a  wise  man  are  the  same,  and  so  are  the  outward 
signs  of  a  frivolous  man  and  a  witty  man ;  and  we  are  not  to  ex- 
pect that  the  majority  will  be  disposed  to  look  to  much  mo7-e  than 
the  outward  sign.  I  believe  the  fact  to  be,  that  wit  is  very  seldom 
the  OJily  eminent  quahty  which  resides  in  the  mind  of  any  man ;  it 
is  commonly  accompanied  by  many  other  talents  of  every  descrip- 
tion, and  ought  to  be  considered  as  a  strong  evidence  of  a  fertile 
and  superior  understanding.  Almost  all  the  great  poets,  orators, 
and  statesmen  of  all  times  have  been  witty.  Cfesai',  Alexander, 
Ai'istotle,  Descartes,  and  Lord  Bacon,  were  witty  men ;  so  were 
Cicero,  Shakespeare,  Demosthenes,  Boileau,  Pope,  Dryden,  Fon- 
tenelle,  Jonson,  Waller,  Cowley,  Solon,  Socrates,  Dr.  Johnson,  and 
almost  every  man  who  has  made  a  distinguished  figure  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  I  have  talked  of  the  danger  of  wit ;  I  do  not 
mean  by  that  to  enter  into  commonplace  declamation  against  facul- 
ties because  they  are  dangerous;  —  wit  is  dangerous,  eloquence  is 
dangerous,  a  talent  for  observation  is  dangerous,  every  thing  is 
dangerous  that  has  efficacy  and  vigour  for  its  characteristics ; 
nothing  is  safe  but  mediocrity.  The  business  is,  in  conducting  the 
understanding  well,  to  risk  something ;  to  aim  at  uniting  thingS 
that  are  commonly  incompatible.  The  meaning  of  an  extraordinary 
man  is,  that  he  is  eight  men,  not  one  man ;  that  he  has  as  much 
wit  as  if  he  had  no  sense,  and  as  much  sense  as  if  he  had  no  wit ; 
that  his  conduct  is  as  judicious  as  if  he  were  the  dullest  of  human 
beings,  and  his  imagination  as  brilliant  as  if  he  were  irretrievably 
ruined.     But  when  wit  is  combined  with  sense  and  information 


SUBLIMITY.  235 

when  it  is  softened  by  benevolence,  and  restrained  by  strong  prin- 
ciple ;  when  it  is  in  the  hands  of  a  man  who  can  use  it  and  despise 
it,  who  can  be  witty  and  something  much  better  than  witty,  who 
loves  honour,  justice,  decency,  good  nature,  moi'ahty,  and  religion, 
ten  thousand  times  better  than  wit;  —  wit  is  then  a  beautiful  and 
delightful  part  of  our  nature.  There  is  no  more  mteresting  spec- 
tacle than  to  see  the  effects  of  wit  upon  the  different  characters  of 
men ;  than  to  observe  it  expanding  caution,  relaxing  dignity,  un- 
freezing coldness — teaching  age,  and  care,  and  pain,  to  smile — 
extorting  reluctant  gleams  of  pleasure  from  melancholy,  and  charm- 
ing even  the  pangs  of  grief.  It  is  pleasant  to  observe  how  it  pen- 
etrates through  the  coldness  and  awkwardness  of  society,  gradually 
bringing  men  nearer  together,  and,  like  the  combined  force  of  wine 
and  oil,  giving  every  man  a  glad  heart  and  a  shining  countenance. 
Genuine  and  innocent  wit  like  this,  is  surely  the  flavour  of  the 
mind!  Man  could  direct  his  ways  by  plain  reason,  and  support 
his  hfe  by  tasteless  food ;  but  God  has  given  us  wit,  and  flavour, 
and  brightness,  and  laughter,  and  perfumes,  to  enhven  the  days  of 
man's  pilgi'image,  and  to  "  charm  his  pained  steps  over  the  burning 
marie." 


INHERENT    SUBLIMITY.* 

It  is  very  true  what  Mr.  Alison  says,  that  "  there  are  many 
sensations  universally  called  sublime,  which  association  may  make 
otherwise."  I  admit  readily,  that  a  fortuitous  connection  of 
thought  can  make  it  otherwise  than  subhme ;  but  the  question  is, 
Did  it  receive  from  nature  the  character  of  sublime?  does  any 
thing  receive  from  nature  the  character  of  sublime,  or  the  char- 
acter of  beautiful?  and  would  anything  perpetually  display,  and 
constantly  preserve  such  a  character,  if  no  accident  intervened  to 
raise  up  a  contrary  association  ?  Certainty  on  such  subjects  can 
not  be  attained  ;  but  I,  for  one,  strongly  believe  in  the  affirmative 
of  the  question  —  that  Nature  speaks  to  the  mind  of  n\?a\  imme- 
diatehj  in  beautiful  and  sublime  language ;  that  she  astonishes  him 
with  magnitude,  appals  him  with  darkness,  cheers  him  with  splen- 
dour, sodthes  him  with  harmony,  captivates  him  with  emotion,  en- 
chants him  with  fame  ;  she  never  intended  man  should  walk  among 
*  From  the  Essay  on  Taste. 


236  TASTE. 

her  flowers,  and  her  fields,  and  her  streams,  unmoved ;  nor  did 
she  rear  the  strength  of  the  hills  in  vain,  or  mean  that  we  should 
look  with  a  stupid  heai't  on  the  wild  glorj  of  the  torrent,  burstmg 
from  the  darkness  of  the  forest,  and  dashing  over  the  crumbhng 
rock.  I  would  as  soon  deny  hardness,  or  softness,  or  figui-e,  to  be 
qualities  of  matter,  as  I  would  deny  beauty  or  sublimity  to  belong 
to  its  qualities. 

Every  man  is  as  good  a  judge  of  a  question  hke  this,  as  the 
ablest  metaphysician.  Walk  in  the  fields  in  one  of  the  mornings 
of  May,  and  if  you  carry  with  you  a  mind  unpolluted  with  harm, 
watch  how  it  is  impressed.  You  are  delighted  with  the  beauty  of 
colours  ;  are  not  those  colours  beautiful  ?  You  breathe  vegetable 
fragrance  ;  is  not  that  fragrance  grateful  ?  You  see  the  sun  rising 
from  behind  a  mountain,  and  the  heavens  painted  with  light ;  is 
not  that  renewal  of  the  Mght  of  the  morning  subUme  ?  You  reject 
all  obvious  reasons,  and  say  that  these  things  are  beautiful  and 
sublime  because  the  accidents  of  life  have  made  them  so;  —  I  say 
they  are  beautiful  and  sublime,  because  God  has  made  them 
so  !  that  it  is  the  original,  indelible  character  impressed  upon  them 
by  Him,  who  has  opened  these  sources  of  simple  pleasure,  to  calm, 
perhaps,  the  perturbations  of  sense,  and  to  make  us  love  that  joy 
which  is  purchased  without  giving  j)ain  to  another  man's  heart, 
and  without  entailing  reproach  upon  our  own. 


CEBTAINTY  OF   TASTE.* 

The  progress  of  good  taste,  however,  though  it  is  certain  and 
irresistible,  is  slow.  Mistaken  pleasantry,  false  ornament,  and 
aifected  conceit,  perish  by  the  discriminating  hand  of  time,  that  lifts 
up  from  the  dust  of  oblivion,  the  grand  and  simple  efforts  of  genius. 
Title,  rank,  prejudice,  party,  artifice,  and  a  thousand  disturbing 
forces,  are  always  at  work  to  confer  unmerited  fame ;  but  every  re- 
curring year  contributes  its  remedy  to  these  infringements  on  jus- 
tice and  good  sense.  The  breath  of  living  acclamation  can  not 
reach  the  ages  which  are  to  come  :  the  judges  and  the  judged  are 
no  more ;  passion  is  extinguished ;  party  is  forgotten ;  and  the 
mild  yet  inflexible  decisions  of  taste,  will  receive  nothing,  as  the 
price  of  praise,  but  the  solid  exertions  of  superior  talent.  Justice 
*i'i-om  the  same. 


THE   BEAUTIFUL.  237 

is  pltfisant,  even  when  she  destroys.  It  is  a  grateful  homage  to 
common  sense,  to  see  those  productions  hastening  to  that  obUvion, 
in  their  progress  to  which  they  should  never  have  been  retarded. 
But  it  is  much  more  pleasant  to  witness  the  power  of  taste  in  the 
work  of  preservation  and  lasting  praise;  —  to  think  that,  in  these 
fleeting  and  evanescent  feelings  of  the  beautiful  and  the  sublime, 
men  have  discovered  something  as  fixed  and  as  positive,  as  if  they 
were  measuring  the  flow  of  the  tides,  or  weigliing  the  stones  on 
which  they  tread;  —  to  think  that  there  lives  not,  in  the  civilized 
world,  a  being  who  knows  he  has  a  mind,  and  who  knows  not  that 
Virgil  and  Homer  have  written,  that  Raffaelle  has  painted,  and 
that  Tully  has  spoken.  Intrenched  in  these  everlasting  bulwarks 
against  barbarism,  Taste  points  out  to  the  races  of  men,  as  they 
spring  up  in  the  order  of  time,  on  what  i:)ath  they  shall  guide  the 
labours  of  the  human  spirit.  Here  she  is  safe ;  hence  she  never 
can  be  driven,  while  one  atom  of  matter  clings  to  another,  and  till 
man,  with  all  his  wonderful  system  of  feeling  and  thought,  is  called 
away  to  Him  who  is  the  great  Author  of  all  that  is  beautiful,  and 
all  that  is  subUme,  and  all  that  is  good ! 


INCENTIVES    OF    THE    BEAUTIFUL.* 

What  are  half  the  crimes  in  the  world  committed  for  ?  What 
brings  into  action  the  best  virtues  ?  The  desire  of  possessing. 
Of  possessing  what? — not  mere  money,  but  every  species  of  the 
beautiful  which  money  can  purchase.  A  man  lies  hid  in  a  little, 
dirty,  smoky  I'oom  for  twenty  years  of  his  life,  and  sums  up  as 
many  columns  of  figures  as  would  reach  round  half  the  earth,  if 
they  were  laid  at  length ;  he  gets  rich ;  what  does  he  do  with  his 
riches  ?  He  buys  a  large,  well-proportioned  house :  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  his  furniture,  he  gratifies  himself  with  all  the  beauty 
which  splendid  colours,  regular  figures,  and  smooth  surfaces,  can 
convey ;  he  has  the  beauties  of  variety  and  association  in  his 
grounds :  the  cup  out  of  which  he  drinks  his  tea  is  adorned  with 
beautiful  figures  ;  the  chair  in  which  he  sits  is  covered  with  smooth, 
shining  leather ;  his  table-cloth  is  of  the  most  beautiful  damask ; 
mirrors  reflect  the  lights  from  every  quarter  of  the  room ;  pictures 

*  From  the  Lectures  on  the  Beautiful. — Part  n. 


238  THE  SABBATH. 

of  tlie  best  masters  feed  his  eye  with  all  the  beauties  of  imitation. 
A  million  of  human  creatures  are  employed  in  tliis  country  in 
ministering  to  this  feeling  of  the  beautiful.  It  is  only  a  barbarous, 
ignorant  people  that  can  ever  be  occupied  by  the  necessaries  of 
life  alone.  If  to  eat,  and  to  drink,  and  to  be  warm,  were  the  only 
passions  of  our  minds,  w^e  should  all  be  what  the  lowest  of  us  all 
are  at  this  day.  The  love  of  the  beautiful  calls  man  to  fresh 
exertions,  and  awakens  him  to  a  more  noble  life ;  and  the  glory 
of  it  is,  that  as  painters  imitate,  and  poets  sing,  and  statuaries 
carve,  and  architects  rear  up  the  gorgeous  trophies  of  their  skill — 
as  everything  becomes  beautiful,  and  orderly,  and  magnificent — the 
activity  of  the  mind  rises  to  still  gi-eater,  and  to  better  objects. 
The  principles  of  justice  are  sought  out;  the  powers  of  the  ruler, 
and  the  rights  of  the  subject,  are  fixed;  man  advances  to  the 
enjo}Tiieut  of  rational  liberty,  and  to  the  establishment  of  those 
great  moral  laws,  which  God  has  written  in  our  hearts,  to  regulate 
the  destinies  of  the  world. 


SONNET    ON    THE    SABBATH.* 

The  first  reason,  then,  why  poetry  is  beautiful,  is,  because  it 
describes  natural  objects,  or  moral  feelings,  which  are  themselves 
beautiful.  For  an  example,  I  will  read  to  you  a  beautiful  sonnet 
of  Dr.  Leyden's  upon  the  Sabbath  morning,  which  has  never  been 
printed : — 

"  With  silent  awe  I  hail  the  sacred  morn, 

"Which  slowly  wakes  while  all  the  fields  are  still ; 
A  soothing  calm  on  every  breeze  is  borne, 

A  graver  murmur  gurgles  from  the  rill, 

And  Echo  answers  softer  from  the  hill, 
And  softer  sings  the  linnet  from  the  tliorn, 

The  skylark  warbles  in  a  tone  less  shrill. 
Hail,  light  serene !  hail,  sacred  Sabbath  morn ! 
The  rooks  float  silent  b}',  in  airy  drove ; 

The  sun,  a  placid  yellow  lustre  shows  ; 
The  gales,  that  lately  sighed  along  the  grove, 

Have  hushed  their  downy  wings  in  dead  repose 
The  hov'ring  rack  of  clouds  forget  to  move : — 

So  smiled  the  day  when  the  first  morn  arose !" 

*  This  and  the  following  passage  is  from  the  Lecture  on  tiie  Beautiful.— 
Part  in. 


HONESTY.  289 

Now,  there  is  not  a  single  image  introJuced  into  this  very  beautiful 
sonnet,  which  is  not  of  itself  beautiful ;  the  soothing  calm  of  the 
breeze,  the  noise  of  the  rill,  the  song  of  the  linnet,  the  hovering 
rack  of  clouds,  and  the  airy  drove  of  rooks  floating  by,  are  all 
objects  that  would  be  beautiful  in  nature,  and,  of  course,  are  so  in 
poetry.  The  notion  that  the  whole  appearance  of  the  world  is 
more  calm  and  composed  on  the  Sabbath,  and  that  its  sanctity  is 
felt  in  the  whole  creation,  is  unusually  beautiful  and  poetical. 
There  is  a  pleasure  in  imitation  —  this  is  exactly  a  picture  of  what 
a  beautiful  placid  morning  is,  and  we  ai-e  dehghted  to  see  it  so 
well  represented. 


A   BEAUTIFUL    ACTION. 

A  London  merchant,  who,  I  belieA'e,  is  still  alive,  while  he  was 
staying  in  the  country  with  a  friend,  happened  to  mention  that  he 
intended,  the  next  year,  to  buy  a  ticket  in  the  lottery ;  his  friend 
desired  he  would  buy  one  for  him  at  the  same  time,  which,  of 
course,  was  very  willingly  agreed  to.  The  conversation  dropped, 
the  ticket  never  arrived,  and  the  whole  affair  was  entirely  forgotten, 
when  the  country  gentleman  received  information  that  the  ticket 
purchased  for  him  by  his  friend,  had  come  up  a  prize  of  twenty 
thousand  pounds.  Upon  liis  arrival  in  London,  he  inquired  of  his 
friend  where  he  had  put  the  ticket,  and  why  he  had  not  informed 
him  that  it  was  purchased.  "  I  bought  them  both  the  same  day, 
mine  and  your  ticket,  and  I  flung  them  both  into  a  drawer  of  my 
bureau,  and  I  never  thought  of  them  afterward."  "  But  how  do 
you  distinguish  one  ticket  from  the  other?  and  why  am  I  the 
holder  of  the  fortunate  ticket,  more  than  you  ?"  "  Why,  at  the 
time  I  put  them  into  the  drawer,  I  put  a  httle  mark  in  ink  upon 
the  ticket  wliich  I  resolved  should  be  yours ;  and  upon  re-opening 
the  drawer,  I  found  that  the  one  so  marked  was  the  fortunate 
ticket."  Now  this  action  appears  to  me  perfectly  beautiful ;  it  is 
le  beau  ideal  in  morals,  and  gives  that  calm,  yet  deep  emotion  of 
pleasure,  which  every  one  so  easily  receives  from  the  beauty  of 
the  exterior  world. 


240  A   SUBLIME   EMPEROR. 


AURUNGZEBE.* 


A  MIXTURE  of  wonder  and  terror  almost  always  excites  the 
feeling  of  the  sublime.  Extraordinary  power  generally  excites 
the  feeling  of  the  sublime  by  these  means  —  by  mixing  Avonder 
with  terror.  A  person  who  has  never  seen  anything  of  the  kind 
but  a  little  boat,  would  think  a  sloop  of  eighty  tons  a  goodly  and 
somewhat  of  a  grand  object,  if  all  her  sails  were  set,  and  she  were 
going  gallantly  before  the  wind ;  but  a  first-rate  man-of-war  would 
sail  over  such  a  sloop,  and  send  her  to  the  bottom,  without  any 
person  on  board  the  man-of-war  perceiving  that  they  had  encoun- 
tered any  obstacle.  Such  power  is  wonderful  and  terrible  —  there- 
fore, sublime.  Everybody  possessed  of  power  is  an  object  either 
of  awe  or  sublimity,  from  a  justice  of  peace  up  to  the  Emperor 
Aurungzebe  —  an  object  quite  as  stupendous  as  the  Alps.  He 
had  thirty-five  millions  of  revenue,  in  a  country  where  the  products 
of  the  earth  are  at  least  six  times  as  cheap  as  in  England :  his  em- 
pire extended  over  twenty-five  degrees  of  latitude,  and  as  many  of 
longitude :  he  had  put  to  death  above  twenty  millions  of  people.  I 
should  like  to  know  the  man  who  could  have  looked  at  Aurungzebe 
without  feeling  liim  to  the  end  of  his  Hmbs,  and  in  every  hair  of  his 
head !  Such  emperors  are  more  subhme  than  cataracts.  I  thmk 
any  man  would  have  shivered  more  at  the  sight  of  Aurungzebe, 
than  at  the  sight  of  the  two  rivers  which  meet  at  the  Blue  Moun- 
tains in  America,  and,  bursting  through  the  whole  breadth  of  the 
rocks,  roll  their  victorious  and  united  waters  to  the  Eastern  Sea. 


SUBLIMITY   OF   ECONOMY. 

I  AM  going  to  say  rather  an  odd  thing,  but  I  can  not  help  think- 
ing that  the  severe  and  rigid  economy  of  a  man  in  distress,  has 
something  in  it  very  sublime,  especially  if  it  be  endured  for  any 
length  of  time  serenely  and  in  silence.  I  remember  a  very  stri- 
king instance  of  it  in  a  young  man,  since  dead.  He  was  the  son  of 
a  country  curate,  who  had  got  him  a  berth  on  board  a  man-of-war, 
as  midshipman.  The  poor  curate  made  a  great  effort  for  liis  son ; 
filced  him  out  well  with  clothes,  and  gave  him  fifty  pounds  in 
money.     The  fiirst  week,  the  poor  boy  lost  his   chest,  clothes, 

*  This  aud  the  following  passage  are  from  the  Lecture  on  the  Sublime. 


INSTINCT.  241 

niont'}',  and  everytliing  he  had  in  the  world.  The  ship  sailed  for 
a  foreign  station ;  and  his  loss  was  Avithout  n  medj.  He  unme- 
diately  quitted  his  mess,  ceased  to  associate  with  the  other  midship- 
men, who  were  the  sons  of  gentlemen ;  and  for  five  years,  without 
mentionmg  it  to  his  parents — who  he  knew  could  not  assist  him 
— or  without  borrowing  a  farthing  from  any  human  being,  without 
a  single  murmur  or  complaint,  did  that  poor  lad  endure  the  most 
abject  and  degi-ading  poverty,  at  a  period  of  life  when  the  feelings 
are  most  alive  to  ridicule,  and  the  appetites  most  prone  to  indul- 
gence. Now,  I  confess  I  am  a  mighty  advocate  for  the  sublimity 
of  such  long  and  patient  endurance.  If  you  can  make  the  world 
stare  and  look  on,  there,  you  have  vanity,  or  compassion,  to  sup- 
port you;  but  to  bury  all  your  wretchedness  in  your  own  mind — to 
resolve  that  you  will  have  no  man's  pity,  while  you  have  one  effort 
left  to  procure  his  respect — to  harbour  no  mean  thought  in  the 
midst  of  abject  poverty,  but,  at  the  very  time  you  are  surrounded 
by  circimastances  of  humility  and  depression,  to  found  a  spirit  of 
modest  independence  upon  the  consciousness  of  having  always 
acted  well ;  this  is  a  sublime,  which,  though  it  is  found  in  the  shade 
and  retirement  of  life,  ought  to  be  held  up  to  the  praises  of  men, 
and  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  noble  model  for  imitation. 


INSTINCT   AND    TALENT.* 

All  the  wonderful  instincts  of  animals,  which,  in  my  humbl« 
opinion,  are  proved  beyond  a  doubt,  and  the  belief  in  which  has 
not  decreased  with  the  increase  of  science  and  investigation — all 
these  instincts  are  given  them  only  for  the  combination  or  preser- 
vation of  their  species.  If  they  had  not  these  instincts,  they  would 
be  swept  off  the  earth  in  an  instant.  This  bee,  that  understands 
architecture  so  well,  is  as  stupid  as  a  pebblestone,  out  of  his  own 
particular  business  of  making  honey :  and,  with  all  his  talents,  he 
only  exists  that  boys  may  eat  his  labours  and  poets  sing  about  them. 
Ut  pueris  placeas  et  declamatio  Jias.  A  peasant-girl  of  ten  years 
old  puts  the  whole  republic  to  death  with  a  little  smoke ;  their 
palaces  are  turned  into  candles,  and  every  clergyman's  wife  makes 
mead-wine  of  the  honey ;  and  there  is  an  end  of  the  glory  and 

*  This  and  the  following  passage  are  from  the  Lecture  on  the  Faculties  of 
Animals  and  of  Man. 


242  MIND   AND   BODY. 

wisdom  of  the  bees !  Whereas,  man  has  talents  that  have  no  sort 
of  reference  to  his  existence  ;  and  without  which,  his  species  might 
remain  upon  earth  in  the  same  safety  as  if  tli^y  had  them  not. 
The  bee  works  at  that  particular  angle  which  saves  most  time 
and  labour ;  and  the  boasted  edifice  he  is  constructing  is  only  for 
his  egg:  but  Somerset  House,  and  Blenheim,  and  the  Louvre, 
have  nothing  to  do  with  breeding.  Epic  poems,  and  Apollo  Bel- 
videres,  and  Venus  de  Medicis,  have  nothing  to  do  with  hving 
and  eating.  "We  might  have  discovered  pig-nuts  without  the 
Royal  Society,  and  gathered  acorns  without  reasoning  about  curves 
of  the  ninth  order.  The  immense  superfluity  of  talent  given  to 
man,  which  has  no  bearing  upon  animal  life,  which  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  mere  preservation  of  existence,  is  one  very  distin- 
guishing circumstance  in  this  comparison.  There  is  no  other 
animal  but  man  to  whom  mind  appears  to  be  given  for  any  other 
purpose  than  the  preservation  of  body. 


CHANGE    OF    INSTINCT. 

The  most  curious  instance  of  a  change  of  instinct  is  mentioned 
by  Darwin.  The  bees  carried  over  to  Barbadoes  and  the  Western 
Isles,  ceased  to  lay  up  any  honey  after  the  first  year ;  as  they 
found  it  not  useful  to  them.  They  found  the  weather  so  fine  and 
materials  for  making  honey  so  plentiful,  that  they  quitted  their 
grave,  prudent,  and  mercantile  character,  became  exceedingly 
profligate  and  debauched,  eat  up  their  capital,  resolved  to  work  no 
moi-e,  and  amused  themselves  by  flying  about  the  sugar-houses,  and 
stinging  the  blacks.  The  fact  is,  that  by  putting  animals  in  differ- 
ent situations,  you  may  change,  and  even  reverse,  any  of  their 
original  propensities.  Spallanzani  brought  up  an  eagle  upon  bread 
and  milk,  and  fed  a  dove  on  raw  beef.  The  circumstances  by 
which  an  animal  is  surrounded,  impel  him  to  do  so  and  so,  by  the 
changes  they  produce  in  his  body  and  mind.  Alter  those  circum- 
stances, and  he  no  longer  does  as  he  did  before.  This,  instead  of 
disproving  the  existence  of  an  irstinct,  only  points  out  the  causes 
on  which  it  depends. 


STORY  OF   AN   ELEPHANT.  243 

ANECDOTE    OF    AN    ELEPHANT.  * 

The  artifices  of  a  gentleman  pursued  by  bailiffs,  and  the  artifices 
of  an  animal  pursued  for  his  life,  are  the  same  thing — call  them 
by  what  name  you  please.  Of  all  animals,  the  most  surprising 
stories  are  told  of  the  docility  of  elephants.  The  black  people, 
who  have  the  care  of  them,  often  go  away,  leaving  them  chained 
to  a  stake,  and  place  near  them  their  young  children,  as  if  under 
their  care :  the  elephant  allows  the  little  creature  to  crawl  as  far 
as  its  trunk  can  reach,  and  then  gently  takes  the  young  master  up, 
and  places  him  more  within  his  own  control.  Every  one  knows 
the  old  story  of  the  tailor  and  the  elephant,  which,  if  it  be  not  true, 
at  least  shows  the  opinion  the  Orientals^  who  know  the  animal 
well,  entertain  of  his  sagacity.  An  eastern  tailor  to  the  court 
was  making  a  magnificent  doublet  for  a  bashaw  of  nme  tails,  and 
covering  it,  after  the  manner  of  eastern  doublets,  with  gold,  silver, 
and  every  species  of  metallic  magnificence.  As  he  was  busying 
himself  on  tliis  momentous  occasion,  there  passed  by,  to  the  pools 
of  water,  one  of  the  royal  elephants,  about  the  size  of  a  broad- 
wheeled  wagon,  rich  in  ivory  teeth,  and  shaking,  with  its  ponder- 
ous tread,  the  tailor's  shop  to  its  remotest  thimble.  As  he  passed 
near  the  window,  the  elephant  happened  to  look  in ;  the  tailor 
lifted  up  his  eyes,  perceived  the  proboscis  of  the  elephant  near  him, 
and,  being  seized  with  a  fit  of  facetiousness,  pricked  the  animal 
with  his  needle ;  the  mass  of  matter  immediately  retired,  stalked 
away  to  the  pool,  filled  his  trunk  full  of  muddy  water,  and,  return- 
ing to  the  shop,  overwhelmed  the  artisan  and  his  doublet  with  the 
dirty  eflTects  of  his  vengeance. 


LONGEVITY    AND    "WISDOM.* 

The  wisdom  of  a  man  is  made  up  of  what  he  observes,  and 
what  others  observe  for  him ;  and  of  course  the  sum  of  what  he 
can  acquire  must  principally  depend  upon  the  time  in  which  he  can 
acquire  it.  All  that  we  add  to  our  knowledge  is  not  an  increase, 
by  that  exact  proportion,  of  all  we  possess ;  because  we  lose  some 
things,  as  we  gain  others  ;  but  upon  the  whole,  while  the  body  and 
mind  remain  healthy,  an  active  man  increases  in  intelhgence,  and 

*  From  the  Lecture  on  the  Faculties  of  Beasts. 


244  VALUE   OF  LONGEYITT. 

consequently  in  power.  If  we  lived  seven  hund.  id  years  instead 
of  seventy,  we  should  write  better  epic  poems,  build  better  houses, 
and  invent  more  complicated  mechanism,  than  we  do  now.  I 
should  question  very  much  if  Mr.  Milne  could  buUd  a  bridge  so 
well  as  a  gentleman  who  had  engaged  in  that  occupation  for  seven 
centuries  :  and  if  I  had  had  only  two  hundred  years'  experience  in 
lecturing  on  moral  philosophy,  I  am  well  convinced  I  should  do  it 
a  little  better  than  I  now  do.  On  the  contrary,  how  diminutive 
and  absurd  all  the  efforts  of  man  would  have  been,  if  the  duration 
of  his  Ufe  had  only  been  twenty  years,  and  if  he  had  died  of  old 
age  just  at  the  period  when  every  human  being  begins  to  suspect 
that  he  is  the  wisest  and  most  extraordinaiy  person  that  ever  did 
exist !  I  think  it  is  Helvetius  who  says,  he  is  quite  certain  we 
only  owe  our  superiority  over  the  orang-outangs  to  the  greater 
length  of  life  conceded  to  us  ;  and  that,  if  our  hfe  had  been  as  short 
as  theirs,  they  would  have  totally  defeated  us  in  the  competition 
for  nuts  and  ripe  blackberries.  I  can  hai'dly  agree  to  this  extrav- 
igant  statement ;  but  I  think,  in  a  life  of  twenty  years  the  efforts 
rf  the  human  mind  would  have  been  so  considerably  lowered,  that 
we  might  probably  have  thought  Helvetius  a  good  pliilosophei',  and 
admired  his  skeptical  absurdities  as  some  of  the  greatest  efforts  of 
the  human  understanding.  Sir  Richard  Blackmore  would  have 
been  our  gi-eatest  poet ;  our  wit  would  have  been  Dutch ;  our 
faith,  French ;  the  Hottentots  would  have  given  us  the  model  for 
manners,  and  the  Turks  for  goverimient ;  and  we  might  i>robably 
have  been  such  miserable  reasoners  respecting  the  sacred  truths 
of  religion,  that  we  should  have  thought  they  wanted  the  sujjport 
of  a  puny  and  childish  jealousy  of  the  poor  beasts  that  perish.  His 
gregarious  nature  is  another  cause  of  man's  superiority  over  all 
other  animals.  A  Hon  lies  under  a  hole  in  a  rock ;  and  if  any 
other  Hon  hajipen  to  pass  by,  they  fight.  Xow,  whoever  gets  a 
habit  of  lying  under  a  hole  in  a  rock,  and  fighting  with  every  gen- 
tleman who  passes  near  him,  can  not  possibly  make  any  progress. 
Every  man's  understanding  and  acquirements,  how  great  and  ex- 
tensive soever  they  may  appear,  are  made  up  from  the  contribu- 
tions of  his  friends  and  companions.  You  spend  yom-  morning  in 
learning  from  Hume  what  happened  at  particular  periods  of  your 
own  history :  you  dine  where  some  man  tells  you  what  he  has  ob- 
served in  the  East  Indies,  and  another  discourses  of  brown  sugar 


SHYNESS.  245 

and  Jamaica.  It  is  from  these  perpetual  rills  of  knowledge,  that 
you  refresh  yourself,  and  become  strong  and  healthy  as  you  are. 
If  lions  would  consort  ."ogetlier,  and  growl  out  the  observations 
they  have  made,  about  hilling  sheep  and  shepherds,  the  most  likely 
places  for  catching  a  calf  grazing,  and  so  forth,  they  could  not  fail 
to  improve ;  because  they  would  be  actuated  by  such  a  wide  range 
of  observation,  and  operating  by  the  joint  force  of  so  many  mind?. 
It  may  be  said,  that  the  gregarious  spirit  in  man  may  proceed 
from  his  wisdom  ;  and  not  his  wisdom  from  his  gregarious  spirit. 
This  I  should  doubt.  It  appears  to  be  an  original  principle  in 
some  animals,  and  not  in  others  ;  and  is  a  quality  given  to  some 
to  better  their  condition,  as  swiftness  or  strength  is  given  to 
others.  The  tiger  lives  alone — bulls  and  cows  do  not;  yet,  a 
tiger  is  as  wise  an  animal  as  a  bull.  A  wild  boar  lives  with  the 
herd  till  he  comes  of  age,  which  he  does  at  three  years,  and  then 
quits  the  herd  and  lives  alone.  There  is  a  solitary  species  of  bee, 
and  there  is  a  gregarious  bee.  Wliether  an  animal  should  herd 
or  not,  seems  to  be  as  much  a  provision  of  nature,  as  whether  it 
should  crawl,  creep,  or  fly. 


SHYNESS. 


The  most  curious  offspring  of  shame,  is  shyness ; — a  word  al- 
ways used,  I  fancy,  in  a  bad  sense,  to  signify  misplaced  shame  ;  for 
a  person  who  felt  only  diffident,  exactly  in  proportion  as  he  ought, 
would  never  be  called  shy.  But  a  shy  person  feels  more  shame, 
than  it  is  graceful,  or  proper,  he  should  feel ;  generally,  either  from 
ignorance  or  pride.  A  young  man,  in  making  his  first  entrance 
into  society,  is  so  ignorant  as  to  imagine  he  is  the  object  of  univer- 
sal attention ;  and  that  everything  he  does  is  subject  to  the  most 
rigid  criticism.  Of  course,  under  such  a  supposition,  he  is  shy 
and  embarrassed :  he  regains  his  ease,  as  he  becomes  aware  of  his 
insignificance.  An  excessive  jealousy  of  reputation,  is  the  very 
frequent  parent  of  shyness,  and  makes  us  all  afraid  of  saying  and 
doing,  what  we  might  say  and  do,  with  the  utmost  propriety  and 
grace.  We  are  afraid  of  hazarding  anything;  and  the  game 
stands  still,  because  no  man  will  venture  any  stake :  w^hereas,  the 

*  This  and  the  next  are  from  the  Lecture  of  the  Evil  Affections. 


246  SHAME. 

object  of  living  together,  is  not  security  only,  but  enjoyment.  Both 
objects  are  j^romoted  by  a  moderate  dread  of  shame ;  both  de- 
stroyed by  that  passion,  when  it  amounts  to  shyness; — for  a  shy 
person  not  only  feels  pain,  and  gives  pain ;  but,  what  is  worse,  he 
incurs  blame,  for  a  want  of  that  rational  and  manly  confidence, 
which  is  so  useful  to  those  who  possess  it,  and  so  pleasant  to  those 
Avho  witness  it.  I  am  severe  against  shyness,  because  it  looks 
like  a  virtue  without  being  a  virtue ;  and  because  it  gives  us  false 
notions  of  what  the  real  Yixiue  is.  I  admit  that  it  is  sometimes  an 
affair  of  body,  rather  than  of  mind  ;  that  where  a  person  wishes  to 
say  what  he  knows  will  be  received  yn\h  favour,  he  cannot  com- 
mand himself  enough  to  do  it.  But  this  is  merely  the  effect  of 
habit,  where  the  cause  that  created  the  habit  has  for  a  moment 
ceased.  When  the  feelings  respecting  shame  are  disciplined  by 
good  sense,  and  commerce  with  the  world,  to  a  fair  medium,  the 
body  will  soon  learn  to  obey  the  decisions  of  the  understanding. 

Nor  let  any  young  man  imagine  (however  it  may  flatter  the 
vanity  of  those  who  perceive  it),  that  there  can  be  anything  worthy 
of  a  man,  in  faltering,  and  tripping,  and  stammering,  and  looking 
like  a  fool,  and  acting  like  a  clown.  A  silly  college  pedant  be- 
lieves that  this  highest  of  all  the  vii'tues,  consists  in  the  shame  of 
the  body ;  in  losing  the  ease  and  possession  of  a  gentleman ;  in 
turning  red ;  and  tumbling  down  ;  in  saying  this  thing,  when  you 
mean  that ;  in  overturning  everybody  within  your  reach,  out  of 
pure  bashfuhiess  ;  and  in  a  general  stupidity  and  ungainhness,  and 
confusion  of  limb,  and  thought,  and  motion.  But  that  dread  of 
shame,  which  virtue  and  wisdom  teach,  is,  to  act  so,  from  the  cra- 
dle to  the  tomb,  that  no  man  can  cast  upon  you  the  shadow  of  re- 
proach ;  not  to  swerve  on  tliis  side  for  wealth,  or  on  that  side  for 
favour ;  but  to  go  on  speaking  truly,  and  acting  justly  ;  no  man's 
oppressor,  and  no  man's  sycophant  and  slave.  This  is  the  shame 
of  the  soul ;  and  these  are  the  blushes  of  the  inward  man  ;  which 
are  worth  all  the  distortions  of  the  body,  and  all  the  crimson  of  the 
face. 


USES    OF    THE    EVIL    AFFECTIONS. 

It  appears,  then,  from  tliis  enumeration  of  the  ungrateful  pas- 
oions,  which  lead  men  to  act  from  feelings  of  aversion,  that  they  a-re 


GOOD  IN  ILL.  247 

all  referable  to  tlie  memory  of  evil,  the  actual  sensation,  the  future 
anticipation  of  it,  or  the  resentment  which  any  one  of  these  notions 
is  apt  to  excite.  The  remembrance  of  past  evils,  produces  mehm- 
choly :  the  sensation  of  present  evils,  if  they  be  referred  to  the 
body,  pain ;  if  to  the  mind,  grief.  Envy,  hatred,  and  malice,  are 
all  modifications  of  resentment,  differing  in  the  causes  which  have 
excited  that  resentment,  as  well  as  in  the  degree  in  which  it  is  en- 
tertained. Shame  is  that  particular  species  of  grief,  which  pro- 
ceeds from  losing  the  esteem  of  our  fellow-creatures  ;  feai',  the  an- 
ticipation of  future  evils.  This  is  the  catalogue  of  human  miseries 
and  pains  ;  and  it  is  plain  why  they  have  been  added  to  our  nature. 
By  the  miseries  of  the  body,  man  is  controlled  within  his  proper 
sphere,  and  learns  what  manner  of  life  it  was  intended  he  should 
lead  :  fear  and  suspicion  are  given  to  guard  him  from  harm  :  re- 
sentment, to  punish  those  who  inflict  it ;  and  by  punishment,  to  de- 
ter them.  By  the  pain  of  inactivity,  we  are  driven  to  exertion  : 
by  the  dread  of  shame,  to  labour  for  esteem.  But  all  these  preg- 
nant and  productive  feelings  are  poured  into  the  heart  of  man,  not 
with  anything  that  has  the  air  of  human  moderation — not  with  a 
measure  that  looks  Uke  precision  and  adjustment — but  wildly,  lav- 
ishly, and  in  excess.  Providence  only  impels  ;  it  makes  us  start 
up  from  the  earth,  and  do  something ;  but  whether  that  something 
shall  be  good  or  evil,  is  the  arduous  decision  which  that  Provi- 
dence has  left  to  us.  You  cannot  sit  quietly  till  the  torch  is  held 
up  to  your  cottage,  and  the  dagger  to  your  throat :  if  you  could, 
this  scene  of  things  would  not  long  be  what  it  now  is.  The  solemn 
feeling  which  rises  up  in  you  at  such  times,  is  as  much  the  Avork 
of  God,  as  the  splendour  of  the  lightning  is  his  work ;  but  that 
feeling  may  degenerate  into  the  fury  of  a  savage,  or  be  disciplined 
into  the  rational  opposition  of  a  wise  and  a  good  man.  You  must 
be  affected  by  the  distinctions  of  your  fellow-creatures — you  can- 
not help  it ;  but  you  may  envy  those  distinctions,  or  you  may  em- 
ulate them.  The  dread  of  shame  may  enervate  you  for  every 
manly  exertion,  or  be  the  vigilant  guardian  of  purity  and  inno» 
cence.  In  a  strong  mind,  fear  grows  up  into  cautious  sagacity ; 
grief,  into  amiable  tenderness.  Without  the  noble  toil  of  moral 
education,  the  one  is  abject  cowardice,  the  other  eternal  gloom ; 
therefore,  there  is  the  good,  and  there  is  the  evil !  Every  man's 
destiny  is  in  his  own  hands.    Nature  has  given  us  those  beginnings, 


248  HABIT. 

which  are  the  elements  of  the  foulest  vices,  and  the  seeds  of  every 
sweet  and  immortal  virtue :  but  though  Nature  has  given  you  the 
liberty  to  choose,  she  has  terrified  you  by  her  punishments,  and 
lured  you  by  her  rewards,  to  choose  aright ;  for  she  has  not  only 
taken  care  that  envy,  and  cowardice,  and  melancholy,  and  revenge, 
shall  carry  with  them  their  own  curse  —  but  she  has  rewarded 
emulation,  courage,  patience,  cheerfulness,  and  dignity,  with  that 
feeling  of  calm  pleasure,  which  makes  it  the  highest  act  of  human 
wisdom  to  labour  for  their  attainment. 


PAST    HAPPINESS.* 

The  memory  of  past  good,  and  the  memory  of  past  evil,  are 
both  without  a  specific  name  in  our  language ;  though  it  should 
seem,  that  they  require  one,  as  much  as  hope  or  fear — to  which, 
in  point  of  time,  they  are  conti-asted.  We  all  know  that  present 
happiness  is  very  materially  affected  by  happiness  in  prospect: 
but,  perhaps,  it  is  not  enough  urged  as  a  motive  for  benev- 
olence. 

Mankind  are  always  happier  for  having  been  happy ;  so  that 
if  you  make  them  happy  now,  you  make  them  happy  twenty 
years  hence  by  the  memory  of  it.  A  childhood  passed  with  a 
due  mixture  of  rational  indulgence,  under  fond  and  wise  parents, 
diffuses  over  the  whole  of  life,  a  feeling  of  calm  pleasure ;  and, 
ui  extreme  old  age,  is  the  very  last  remembrance  which  time  can 
erase  from  the  mind  of  man.  No  enjoyment,  however  inconsider- 
able, is  confined  to  the  j^resent  moment.  A  man  is  the  happier 
for  life,  from  having  made  once  an  agreeable  tour,  or  hved  for 
any  length  of  time  with  pleasant  people,  or  enjoyed  any  consider- 
able interval  of  innocent  pleasure :  and  it  is  most  probably  the 
recollection  of  their  past  pleasures,  which  contributes  to  render 
old  men  so  inattentive  to  the  scenes  before  them;  and  carries 
them  back  to  a  world  that  is  past,  and  to  scenes  never  to  be 
renewed  again. 


IHE    FORCE    OF    HABIT. HOBBES    AND    HIS    PIPE.f 

Habits  may  be  divided  into  active  and  passive;  —  those  things 
which  we  do  by  an  act  of  the  will,  and  those  things  which  we 
*  From  the  Lecture  on  the  Benevolent  Affections, 
t  From  the  Lecture  on  Habit,  Part  L 


ilOBBES   ANU   HIS  PIPE.  249 

suffer  by  the  agency  of  some  external  power.  I  begin  wiLli  the 
active  habits ;  and,  after  stating  a  few  of  the  most  famihar  of 
them,  I  will  shortly  analyze  the  examples,  in  order  to  show  that 
they  are  merely  referable  to  association.  It  may  be  as  well,  per- 
haps to  give  a  specimen  of  the  life  of  a  man  whose  existence  was, 
at  last,  entirely  dependent  upon  the  habits  he  had  contracted :  it  is 
a  foir  picture  of  the  dominion  which  habit  estabhshes  over  us,  at 
the  close  of  life.  "  The  professed  rule  of  Mr.  Hobbes,"  says  Dr. 
White  Kennet  in  his  Memoirs  of  the  Cavendish  family,  "  was  to 
dedicate  the  morning  to  exercise,  and  the  evening  to  study.  At 
his  first  rising,  he  walked  out,  and  climbed  up  a  hill:  if  the 
weather  was  not  dry,  he  made  a  point  of  fatiguing  himself  within 
doors,  so  as  to  perspire ;  remarking  constantly,  that  an  old  man 
had  more  moisture  than  heat ;  and  by  such  motion,  heat  was  to  be 
acquired,  and  moisture  expelled.  After  this,  the  philosopher  took 
a  very  comfortable  breakfast,  and  then  went  round  the  lodgings  to 
wait  upon  the  earl,  the  countess,  the  children,  and  any  consider- 
able strangers ;  paying  some  short  addresses  to  all  of  them.  He 
kept  these  rounds  till  about  twelve  o'clock,  when  he  had  a  little 
dinner  provided  for  him,  which  he  eat  always  by  himself,  without 
ceremony.  Soon  after  dinner,  he  retired  to  his  study,  and  had  his 
candle,  with  ten  or  twelve  pipes  of  tobacco,  laid  by  him ;  then, 
shutting  the  door,  he  fell  to  smoking,  thinking,  and  writing,  for 
several  hours.  He  could  never  endure  to  be  left  in  an  empty 
house ;  whenever  the  earl  removed,  he  would  go  along  with  him,, 
even  to  his  last  stage,  from  Chatsworth  to  Hardwick.  This  was 
the  constant  tenor  of  his  life,  from  which  he  never  varied,  no,  not 
a  moment,  nor  an  atom." 

This  is  the  picture  of  a  man  whose  life  appears  to  have  been 
entirely  regulated  by  the  past ;  who  did  a  thing  because  he  had 
done  it;  who,  so  far  as  bodily  actions  were  concerned,  could 
hardly  be  said  to  have  any  fresh  motives ;  but  was  impelled  by 
one  regular  set  of  volitions,  constantly  recurring  at  fixed  periods. 
Now,  take  any  one  of  his  habits,  and  examine  its  progress ;  it  will 
afford  a  natural  history  of  this  law  of  the  mind,  and  will  show 
what  circumstances  in  that  law  are  most  worthy  of  observation. 

He  smoked :  how  did  this  begin  ?  It  might  have  begun  any 
how  lie  was  staying,  perhaps,  at  some  house  where  smoking 
was  in  fashion,  and  began  to  smoke  out  of  comphancc  with  the 

11* 


250  SMOKING. 

humours  of  other  persons.  At  first,  he  thought  it  unpleasant; 
and  as  all  the  exfjirations  and  inspirations  were  new  and  difficult, 
it  required  considerable  attention ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  evening 
he  could  have  distinctly  recollected,  if  he  had  tried  to  do  so,  that 
his  mind  had  beei;  employed  in  thinking  how  he  was  to  manage 
and  manoeuvre  the  pipe.  The  practice  goes  on ;  the  disgust 
vanishes ;  much  less  attention  is  necessary  to  smoke  well :  in  a 
few  days  the  association  is  formed ;  the  moment  the  cloth  is  taken 
away  .after  supper,  the  idea  of  smoking  occurs  :  if  any  accident 
happen  to  prevent  it,  a  shght  pain  is  felt  in  consequence ;  it  seems 
as  if  things  did  not  go  on  in  their  regular  track,  and  some  con- 
fusion had  crept  into  the  arrangements  of  the  evening.  As  the 
association  goes  on,  it  gathers  strength  from  the  circumstances 
connected  with  it ;  from  the  mirth  and  conversation  with  which  it 
is  joined :  at  last,  after  a  lapse  of  years,  we  see  the  philosopher  of 
Malmsbury  advanced  from  one,  to  one  dozen  of  pij^es ;  so  perfect 
in  all  the  tactics  of  a  smoker,  so  dexterous  in  all  the  manual  of 
his  dirty  recreation,  that  he  would  fill,  light,  and  smoke  out  his 
pipe,  without  the  slightest  remembrance  of  what  he  had  been 
doing,  or  the  most  minute  interruption  to  any  immoral,  irreligious, 
or  unmathematical  track  of  thought,  in  which  he  happened  to  be 
engaged :  but  we  must  not  forget,  that  though  his  amusement  occu- 
pied him  so  little,  and  was  passed  over  with  such  a  small  share  of 
his  attention,  the  want  of  it  would  have  occupied  him  so  much, 
that  he  could  have  done  nothing  without  it ;  all  his  speculations 
would  have  been  at  an  end,  and  without  his  twelve  pipes  he  might 
have  been  a  friend  to  devotion,  to  freedom,  or  anything  else 
which,  in  the  customary  tenor  of  his  thoughts,  he  certainly  was 
not.  The  phenomenon  observable  here  is,  that  the  physical  taste 
lost  its  effect ;  that  which  was  nauseous  ceased  to  be  so.  Next, 
the  habit  began  with  a  considerable  difficulty  of  bodily  action,  and 
with  a  full  attention  of  the  mind  to  what  was  passing.  It  was  not 
easy  to  smoke,  and  the  philosopher  was  compelled  to  be  careful, 
in  order  to  do  it  properly ;  but  as  the  habit  increased,  he  indulged 
in  it  with  such  little  attention  of  mind  or  exertion  of  body,  that 
he  did  it  without  knowing  he  did  it.  Lastly,  any  interruption 
of  the  habit  would  have  occasioned  to  him  the  greatest  un- 
easiness 


PERIODICAL   HABITS.  251 

THE    ORBIT    OF    A    HABIT.* 

The  period  of  time  in  which  a  habit  renews  its  action,  or  (if  I 
may  be  allowed  the  expression)  the  orbit  of  a  habit,  is  of  very  dif- 
ferent dimensions.  We  may  have  a  habit  of  shrugging  up  the 
shoulders  every  half-hour;  or,  of  eating  three  eggs  every  morning; 
or,  of  dining  at  a  club  once  a  month ;  or,  of  going  down  to  see  a 
relation  once  a  year :  but  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  any  habit  form- 
ing itself  for  a  period  greater  than  a  year.  I  can  easily  conceive 
that  a  person  who  set  off  on  every  1st  of  June,  to  pay  a  visit, 
might  have  the  force  of  habit  added  to  his  other  inducements,  and 
go,  partly  because  he  loved  the  persons,  partly  because  he  had 
done  it  before ;  but  is  it  easy  to  believe  that  there  is  a  habit  of 
doing  anything  every  other  year?  or,  how  very  ridiculous  it 
would  sound  for  two  persons  to  say.  "  We  agreed  a  long  time 
ago  to  dine  together  every  Bissextile,  or  leap-year,  and  it  is  now 
grown  into  a  perfect  habit !"  This  Hmitation  of  habits  to  the 
period  of  a  year  —  which  I  by  no  means  lay  any  great  stress 
upon,  but  which  has  some  degree  of  truth  in  it  —  depends 
somewhat  upon  the  revolution  of  names  and  appearances.  To 
do  anything  the  first  day  of  a  month,  or  on  one  particular  day 
every  year,  is  to  strengthen  a  habit  by  the  recurrence  of  names 
or  seasons ;  but  if  an  action  be  performed  every  thii'd  or  fourth 
year,  the  same  name  and  the  same  appearances  have  occurred, 
without  being  connected  with  the  same  deed,  and  therefore  the 
habit  is  impau-ed. 


SUPERIORITY    TO    HABIT. 

Men  aware  of  the  power  of  habit,  escape  its  influence;  and 
therefore,  it  is  among  the  most  trite  principles  of  education  to  dis- 
cover the  particular  habits  to  which  we  are  exposed  by  situation 
and  profession ;  and,  when  they  are  discovered,  to  resist  them. 
Without  any  intentional  efforts  to  resist  professional  habits,  they 
are  unconsciously  resisted  by  the  magnitude  and  variety  of  some 
men's  minds ;  and  by  the  liberal  pursuits  which  they  contrive  to 
connect  with  their  professions.  There  is  an  effect  of  custom  and 
habit  to  which  we  are  all  extremely  indebted,  and  that  is,  that  it 

*  This  and  the  following  passages  arc  from  the  Lectures  on  Habit,  Part  II. 


252  ABOVE   HABIT, 

regulates  everything  whicli  nothing  else  regulates,  where  there  is 
no  propriety,  and  no  duty,  to  be  consulted.  The  reference  is  al- 
ways to  habit  —  in  dress,  in  ceremony,  in  equipage,  in  all  the  cir- 
cumstances of  hfe,  where  almost  any  conduct  would  be  virtuous,  a 
comphance  with  custom  is  the  only  conduct  that  is  wise,  and  a  man 
of  sense  is  rather  pleased  that  the  pubhc  legislate  for  him  on  points 
where  choice  would  neither  be  easy  nor  useful.  It  is  a  strong 
mark  of  a  good  understanding,  to  allow  custom  an  easy  empire  on 
these  occasions.  It  is  a  much  surer  mark  of  talent,  that  men 
should  rise  above  the  influence  of  habit,  and  be  better  and  greater 
than  that  to  which  the  circumstances  of  their  lives,  or  the  charac- 
ter of  their  age,  would  appear  to  doom  them.  This  is  the  reason 
why  we  admire  men,  who,  born  in  poverty,  and  accustomed  to 
objects  of  sense,  have  been  able  to  conceive  the  dignity,  the  value, 
and  the  pleasure  of  intellectual  gratification  ;  who,  deviating  from 
every  model  they  had  seen,  and  guided  only  by  their  inward  light, 
have  steadily,  and  successfully,  pursued  the  path  of  virtuous  fame. 
By  this  subjugation  of  habitual  thoughts,  and  escape  from  habitual 
objects.  Bacon  the  friar,  Czar  Peter,  Lord  Verulam,  and  all  great 
men,  in  law  and  in  arts,  have  preceded  the  ages  in  which  they 
lived,  and  become  the  beacons  of  future  times.  The  mass  of 
men,  say  whatever  is  said,  do  whatever  is  done,  think  whatever  is 
thought,  and  can  not  easily  conceive  anything  greater  and  better 
than  what  is  ah-eady  created.  But,  in  the  grossest  period  of 
monastic  ignorance,  Bacon  saw  that  the  whole  art  of  war  might 
be  changed  by  the  invention  of  gunpowder ;  the  Czar  pulled  down 
a  nation  habitually  victorious,  roused  and  elevated  a  people  habit- 
ually stupid  and  depressed :  Lord  Verulam  looked  upon  his  own 
times  with  the  same  cool  estrangement  from  the  influence  of  habit, 
as  if  he  were  contemplating  a  nation  of  the  ancient  world ;  and 
was  so  little  imposed  upon  by  the  imperfect  philosophy  which  then 
prevailed,  that  he  effected  that  entire  revolution  in  physical  rea- 
soning, by  which  we  are  all  benefited  to  the  present  hour.  Such 
victories  over  present  objects — such  power  of  reflecting,  where 
attention  is  not  stimulated  by  novelties  —  are  generally  great 
triumphs  of  the  human  understanding,  and  decisive  proofs  of  its 
vigour  and  excellence,  in  every  individual  instance  where  they 
are  found.  Whoever  is  learned  in  an  ignorant  age ;  whoever  is 
liberal  in  a  bigoted  age ;  whoever  is    temperate  and  respectable 


THE   HABIT   OF   "VIRTUE.  253 

in  a  licentious  age ;  whoever  is  elegant  and  enlarged  in  his  views, 
where  his  profession  chains  him  down  to  technical  rules  and 
narrow  limits ;  whoever  has  gamed  any  good  which  habit  opposes, 
or  avoided  any  evil  which  habit  might  induce  —  that  man  has 
vindicated  the  dignity  and  the  power  of  his  mind,  by  the  fairest  of 
aU  tests — by  doing  what  the  mass  of  mankind  cannot  do. 


EFFECT    OP  HABIT. 

A  BEAUTIFUL  effect  of  habit  is,  that  it  endows  with  preternatural 
strength  every  quahty  of  the  mind  or  heart  which  it  calls  into 
more  than  ordinary  action.  If  protection  is  wanted,  men  are 
ready,  long  habituated  to  the  fear  of  death.  If  gentleness  and 
benevolence  are  wanted  to  lessen  the  miseries  of  hfe,  women  are 
habitually  gentle  and  benevolent.  If  patient  industry,  you  havp 
it  in  the  laborer,  and  the  mechanic.  What  but  the  power  of  habit, 
has  given  to  us  the  advantage  of  those  fine  legal  understandings, 
that  have  gradually  formed  the  system  of  law  in  this  country  ? 
How  are  our  naval  victories  gained,  but  by  habitual  character, 
skill,  and  courage  ?  Whence  the  effusions  of  eloquence  every  day 
to  be  witnessed  in  the  senate,  but  by  that  intrepidity,  self-posses- 
sion, and  command  of  words  and  images,  which  habit  only  can 
confer?  Fresh,  youthful,  untaught  nature  can  never  do  such 
things  as  these.  It  is  nature  in  its  manhood,  instructed  by  failure, 
fortified  by  precedent,  confirmed  by  success,  riveted  by  habit,  and 
carried  to  a  pitch  of  glory,  by  intense  adhesion  to  one  object, 
which,  with  all  the  primary  efforts  of  its  nade  vigour,  it  never 
could  have  reached  ;  diminishing  the  pleasure  of  vice,  and  strength- 
eningr  the  habit  of  virtue. 


THE    PASSIONS. 

The  passions  are  in  morals,  what  motion  is  in  physics :  they 
create,  preserve,  and  animate ;  and  without  them,  all  would  be 
silence  and  death.  Avarice  guides  men  across  the  deserts  of  the 
ocean  ;  pride  covers  the  earth  with  trophies,  and  mausoleums,  and 
pyramids  r  love  turns  men  from  their  savage  rudeness  ;  ambition 
shakes  the  very  foundations  of  kingdoms.  By  the  love  of  glory, 
weak  nations  swell  into  magnitude  and  strength.     Whatever  ther** 


254  GREAT  PASSIONS. 

is  of  terrible,  whatever  there  is  of  beautiful  in  human  events,  all 
that  shakes  the  soul  to  and  fro,  and  is  remembered  while  thought 
and  flesh  cling  together — all  these  have  their  origin  from  the  pas- 
sions. As  it  is  only  in  storms,  and  when  their  coming  waters  are 
driven  up  into  the  air,  that  we  catch  a  sight  of  the  depths  of  the 
sea,  it  is  only  in  the  season  of  perturbation  that  we  have  a  glimpse 
of  the  real  internal  nature  of  man.  It  is  then  only,  that  the  might 
of  these  eruptions  shaking  his  frame,  dissipates  all  the  feeble  cov- 
erings of  opinion,  and  rends  in  pieces  that  cobweb  veil,  with  which 
fashion  hides  the  feelings  of  the  heart.  It  is  then  only  that 
Nature  speaks  her  genuine  feelings  ;  and,  as  at  the  last  night  of 
Troy,  when  Venus  illumined  the  darkness,  ^neas  saw  the  gods 
themselves  at  work  —  so  may  we,  when  the  blaze  of  passion  is 
flung  upon  man's  nature,  mark  in  him  the  signs  of  a  celestial 
origin,  and  tremble  at  the  invisible  agents  of  God  ! 

Look  at  great  men  in  critical  and  perilous  moments,  when  every 
cold  and  little  spirit  is  extinguished:  their  passions  always  bring 
them  out  harmless ;  and  at  the  very  moment  when  they  seem  to 
perish,  they  emerge  into  greater  glory.  Alexander,  in  the  midst 
of  his  mutinous  soldiers ;  Frederick  of  Prussia,  combating  against 
the  armies  of  three  kingdoms ;  Cortes  breaking  in  pieces  the 
Mexican  empire : — their  passions  led  all  these  great  men  to  fix 
their  attention  strongly  upon  the  objects  of  their  desires ;  they 
saw  them  under  aspects  unknown  to,  and  unseen  by  common  men, 
and  which  enabled  them  to  conceive  and  execute  those  hardy  en- 
terprises, deemed  i-ash  and  foolish,  till  their  wisdom  was  established 
by  their  success.  It  is  in  fact  the  great  passions  alone  Avhich 
enable  men  to  distinguish  between  what  is  difficult  and  what  is 
impossible :  a  distinction  always  confounded  by  merely  sensible 
men ;  who  do  not  even  suspect  the  existence  of  those  means,  wliich 
men  of  genius  employ  to  efffect  their  object.  It  is  only  passion 
which  gives  a  man  that  high  enthusiasm  for  his  country,  and 
makes  him  regard  it  as  the  only  object  worthy  of  human  attention  ; 
—  an  enthusiasm,  which  to  common  eyes  appears  madness  and 
extravagance ;  but  which  always  creates  fresh  powers  of  mind, 
and  commonly  insures  their  ultimate  success.  In  fact,  it  is  only 
the  great  passions,  which,  tearing  us  away  from  the  seductions  of 
indolence,  endow  us  with  that  continuity  of  attention,  to  which 
alone  superiox'ity  of  mind  is  attached.      It  is  to  their  passions, 


THEIR  INFLUENCE.  255 

alone,  under  the  providence  of  God,  that  nations  must  trust,  when 
perils  gather  thick  about  them,  and  their  last  moments  seem  to  be 
at  hand.  The  history  of  the  world  shows  us  that  men  are  not  to 
be  counted  by  their  numbers,  but  by  the  fire  and  vigour  of  their 
passions ;  by  their  deep  sense  of  injury ;  by  their  memory  of  past 
glory  ;  by  their  eagerness  for  fresh  fame  ;  by  their  clear  and  steady 
resolution  of  ceasing  to  live,  or  of  achieving  a  particular  object, 
which,  when  it  is  once  formed,  strikes  off  a  load  of  manacles  and 
chains,  and  gives  free  space  to  all  heavenly  and  heroic  feelings. 
All  great  and  extraordinary  actions  come  from  the  heart.  There 
are  seasons  in  human  affairs,  when  qualities  fit  enough  to  conduct 
the  common  business  of  life,  are  feeble  and  useless ;  and  when 
men  must  trust  to  emotion,  for  that  safety  Avhich  reason  at  such 
times  can  never  give.  These  are  the  feelings  wliich  led  the  ten 
thousand  over  the  Carduchian  mountains ;  these  are  the  feelings 
by  which  a  handful  of  Greeks  broke  in  pieces  the  power  of  Persia : 
they  have,  by  turns,  humbled  Austria,  reduced  Spain ;  and  in  the 
fens  of  the  Dutch,  and  on  the  mountains  of  the  Swiss,  defended 
the  happiness,  and  revenged  the  oppressions,  of  man  !  God  calls 
all  the  passions  out  in  their  keenness  and  vigour,  for  the  present 
safety  of  mankmd.  Anger  and  revenge,  and  the  heroic  mind,  and 
a  readiness  to  suffer: — all  the  secret  strength,  all  the  invisible 
array,  of  the  feelings  —  all  that  nature  has  reserved  for  the  great 
scenes  of  the  world.  For  the  usual  hopes,  and  the  common  aids 
of  man,  are  all  gone  !  Kings  have  perished,  armies  are  subdued, 
nations  mouldered  away !  Nothing  remains,  under  God,  but  those 
passions  which  have  often  proved  the  best  ministers  of  hig 
vengeance,  and  the  surest  protectors  of  the  world. 


256  PREACHING. 


PASSAGES  FROM  SERMONS. 


OF  SERMONS.* 

Preaching  has  become  a  bye-word  for  long  and  dull  conversa- 
tion of  any  kind ;  and  whoever  wishes  to  imply,  in  any  piece  of 
writing,  the  absence  of  everything  agreeable  and  inviting,  calls  it 
a  sermon. 

One  reason  for  this  is  the  bad  choice  of  subjects  for  the  pulpit 
The  clergy  are  allowed  about  twenty-six  hours  every  year  for  the 
instruction  of  their  felloAV-creatures  ;  and  I  can  not  help  thinking 
this  short  time  had  better  be  employed  on  practical  subjects,  in  ex- 
plaining and  enforcing  that  conduct  which  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
requires,  and  which  mere  worldly  happiness  commonly  coincides 
to  recommend.  These  are  the  topics  nearest  the  heart,  which 
make  us  more  fit  for  this  and  a  better  world,  and  do  all  the  good 
that  seiTnons  ever  will  do.  Critical  explanations  of  difficult  pas- 
sages of  Scripture,  dissertations  on  the  doctrinal  and  mysterious 
points  of  religion,  learned  investigations  of  the  meaning  and  accom- 
plishment of  prophecies,  do  well  for  publication,  but  are  ungenial 
to  the  habits  and  taste  of  a  general  audience.  Of  the  highest  im- 
portance they  are  to  those  who  can  defend  the  faith  and  study  it 
profoundly ;  but  God  forbid.it  should  be  necessary  to  be  a  scholar, 
or  a  critic,  in  order  to  be  a  Christian.  To  the  multitude,  whether 
elegant  or  vulgar,  the  result  only  of  erudition,  employed  for  the 
defence  of  Christianity,  can  be  of  any  consequence  :  with  the  eru- 
dition itself  they  can  not  meddle,  and  must  be  fatigued  if  they  are 
doomed  to  hear  it.  In  every  congregation  there  are  a  certain  num- 
ber whom  principle,  old  age,  or  sickness,  has  rendered  truly  de 

*  From  the  Preface  to  the  Collection  of  Sermons,  at  Edinburgh,  1800. 


MOBAL  DISCOUESES.  257 

vout ;  but  in  preaching,  as  in  everything  else,  the  greater  number 
of  instances  constitute  the  rule,  and  the  lesser  the  exception. 

A  distinction  is  set  up,  with  the  usual  inattention  to  the  meaning 
of  Avords,  between  moral  and  religious  subjects  of  discourse;  as  if 
every  moral  subject  must  not  necessarily  be  a  Christian  subject. 
If  Christianity  concern  itself  with  our  present,  as  well  as  our  future 
happiness,  how  can  any  virtue,  or  the  doctrine  which  inculcates  it, 
be  considered  as  foreign  to  our  sacred  religion  ?  Has  our  Saviour 
forbidden  justice  —  proscribed  mercy,  benevolence,  and  good  faiih  ? 
or,  when  we  state  the  more  sublime  motives  for  their  cultivation, 
which  we  derive  from  revelation,  why  are  we  not  to  display  the 
temporal  motives  also,  and  to  give  solidity  to  elevation  by  fixing 
piety  upon  interest  ? 

There  is  a  bad  taste  in  the  language  of  sermons  evinced  by  a 
constant  repetition  of  the  same  scriptural  phrases,  which,  perhaps, 
were  used  with  great  judgment  two  hundred  years  ago,  but  are 
now  become  so  trite  that  they  may,  without  any  great  detriment, 
be  exchanged  for  others.  "  Putting  off  the  old  man — and  putting 
on  the  new  man,"  "  The  one  thing  needful,"  "  The  Lord  hath  set 
up  his  candlestick,"  "  The  armour  of  righteousness,"  etc.,  etc.,  etc., 
etc.  The  sacred  Scriptures  are  surely  abundant  enough  to  afford 
us  the  same  idea  with  some  novelty  of  language :  we  can  never  be 
driven,  from  the  penury  of  these  writings,  to  wear  and  fritter  their 
holy  language  into  a  perfect  cant,  which  passes  through  the  ear 
without  leaving  any  impression. 

To  this  cause  of  the  unpopularity  of  sermons  may  be  added  the 
extremely  ungraceful  manner  in  which  they  are  delivered.  The 
English,  generally  remai'kable  for  doing  very  good  things  in  a  very 
bad  manner,  seem  to  have  reserved  the  maturity  and  plenitude  of 
their  awkwardness  for  the  pulpit.  A  clergyman  clings  to  his  vel- 
vet cushion  with  either  hand,  keeps  his  eye  riveted  upon  his  book, 
speaks  of  the  ecstasies  of  joy  and  fear  with  a  voice  and  a  face 
which  indicate  neither,  and  pinions  his  body  and  soul  into  the  same 
attitude  of  limb  and  thought,  for  fear  of  being  called  theatrical  and 
affected.  The  most  intrepid  veteran  of  us  all  dares  no  more  than 
wipe  his  face  with  his  cambric  sudarium  ;*  if,  by  mischance,  his 
hand  slip  from  its  orthodox  gripe  of  the  velvet,  he  draws  it  back 
as  from  liquid  brimstone,  or  the  caustic  iron  of  the  law,  and  atones 
*  Classical  Latin  for  a  cloth  to  wipe  away  perspiration,  oi*,  a  handkerchief. 


258  ELOQUENCE. 

for  this  indecorum  by  fresli  inflexibility  and  more  rigorous  same- 
ness. Is  it  Avonder,  then,  that  every  semi-delirious  sectary  who 
pours  forth  his  animated  nonsense  with  the  genuine  look  and  voice 
of  passion  should  gesticulate  away  the  congregation  of  the  most 
profound  and  learned  divine  of  the  Established  Church,  and  in  two 
Sundays  preach  him  bare  to  the  very  sexton  ?  Why  are  we  nat- 
ural everywhere  but  in  the  pulpit  ?  No  man  expresses  warm  and 
animated  feelings  anywhere  else,  with  his  mouth  alone,  but  with 
his  whole  body ;  he  articulates  with  every  limb,  and  talks  from 
head  to  foot  with  a  thousand  voices.  Why  this  holoplexia*  on 
sacred  occasions  alone  ?  Why  call  in  the  aid  of  paralysis  to  piety? 
Is  it  a  rule  of  oratory  to  balance  the  style  against  the  subject,  and 
to  handle  the  most  sublime  truths  in  the  dullest  language  and  the 
driest  manner  ?  Is  sin  to  be  taken  from  men  as  Eve  was  from 
Adam,  by  casting  them  into  a  deep  slumber  ?  Or  from  what  pos- 
sible perversion  of  common  sense  are  we  all  to  look  like  field- 
preachers  in  Zembla,  holy  lumps  of  ice  numbed  into  quiescence, 
and  stagnation,  and  mumbhng  ? 

It  is  theatrical  to  use  action,  and  it  is  Methodistical  to  use  ac- 
tion. 

But  we  have  cherished  contempt  for  sectaries,  and  persevered 
in  dignified  tameness  so  long,  that  while  we  are  freezing  common 
sense  for  large  salaries  in  stately  churches,  amidst  whole  acres  and 
furlongs  of  empty  pews,  the  crowd  are  feasting  on  ungrammatical 
fervour  and  illiterate  animation  in  the  crumblmg  hovels  of  Metho- 
dists. If  influence  over  the  imagination  can  produce  these  power- 
ful eSects  ;  if  this  be  the  chain  by  which  the  people  are  dragged 
captive  at  the  wheel  of  enthusiasm,  why  are  we,  who  are  rocked 
in  the  cradle  of  ancient  genius,  who  hold  in  one  hand  the  book  of 
the  wisdom  of  God,  and  in  the  other  grasp  that  eloquence  which 
ruled  the  Pagan  world,  why  are  we  never  to  rouse,  to  appeal,  to 
inflame,  to  break  through  every  barrier,  up  to  the  very  haunts  and 
chambers  of  the  soul  ?  If  the  vilest  interest  upon  earth  can  daily 
call  forth  all  the  powers  of  mind,  are  we  to  harangue  on  public 
order,  and  public  happiness,  to  picture  a  reuniting  world,  a  resur- 
rection of  souls,  a  rekindling  of  ancient  affections,  the  dying  day 
of  heaven  and  of  earth,  and  to  unveil  the  throne  of  God,  with  a 

*  A  medical  term,  indicating  a  paralysis  of  the  whole  body,  as  opposed  tc 
araplegia  or  hemiplegia,  a  palsy  of  a  part. 


WARM   CHURCHES.  259 

wretched  apathy  which  we  neither  feel  nor  shoAV  in  the  most  trifling 
concerns  of  hfe  ?  This  surely  can  be  neither  decency  nor  piety, 
but  ignorant  shame,  boyish  bashfulness,  luxurious  indolence,  or  any- 
thing but  propriety  and  sense.  There  is,  I  grant,  something  dis- 
couraging at  present  to  a  man  of  sense  in  the  sarcastical  phrase  of 
popular  preacher;  but  I  am  not  entirely  without  hope  that  the 
time  may  come  when  energy  in  the  pulpit  will  be  no  longer  con- 
sidered as  a  mark  of  superficial  understanding ;  when  animation 
and  affectation  will  be  separated ;  when  churches  will  cease  (as 
Swift  says)  to  be  public  dormitories ;  *  and  sleep  be  no  longer 
looked  upon  as  the  most  convenient  vehicle  of  good  sense. 

I  know  well  that  out  of  ten  thousand  orators  by  far  the  greater 
number  must  be  bad,  or  none  could  be  good ;  but  by  becoming 
sensible  of  the  mischief  we  have  done,  and  are  doing,  we  may  all 
advance  a  proportional  step ;  the  worst  may  become  what  the  best 
are,  and  the  best  better. 

There  is  always  a  want  of  grandeur  in  attributing  great  events 
to  little  causes ;  but  this  is  in  some  small  degree  compensated  for 
by  truth.  I  am  convinced  we  should  do  no  great  injury  to  the 
cause  of  religion  if  we  remembered  the  old  combination  of  aroe  et 
foci,  aiid  kept  our  churches  a  Uttle  warmer.  An  experienced  cler- 
gyman can  pretty  well  estimate  the  number  of  his  audience  by  the 
indications  of  a  sensible  thermometer.  The  same  blighting  wind 
chills  piety  which  is  fatal  to  vegetable  life  ;  yet  our  power  of  en- 
countering weather  varies  with  the  object  of  our  hardihood ;  we 
are  very  Scythians  when  pleasure  is  concerned,  and  Sybarites 
when  the  bell  summons  us  to  church. 

No  reflecting  man  can  ever  wish  to  adulterate  manly  piety  (the 
parent  of  all  that  is  good  in  the  world)  with  mummery  and  parade. 
But  we  are  strange,  very  strange  creatures,  and  it  is  better,  per- 
haps, not  to  place  too  much  confidence  in  our  reason  alone.  If 
anything,  there  is,  perhaps,  too  little  pomp  and  ceremony  in  our 
worship,  instead  of  too  much.  We  quarreled  with  the  Roman 
Catholic  church,  in  a  great  hurry  and  a  great  passion,  and  furious 
with  spleen;   clothed  ourselves  with  sackcloth,  because  she  was 

*  Fuller,  in  his  Holy  State,  has  said :  "  It  is  a  shame  when  the  Church 
itself  is  coemeterium,  wherein  the  livincj  sleep  above  ground,  as  the  dead  do 
beneath."  Swift  makes  tiie  most  of  this  subject  in  his  witty  sermon  on 
Sleeping  in  Church. 


260  EAENESTNESS. 

habited  in  brocade ;  rushing,  like  children,  from  one  extreme  to 
another,  and  blind  to  all  medium  between  complication  and  bar- 
renness, formality  and  neglect.  I  am  very  glad  to  find  we  are 
calling  in,  more  and  more,  the  aid  of  music  to  our  service.  Ip 
London,  where  it  can  be  commanded,  good  music  has  a  prodigious 
effect  in  filling  a  church;  organs  have  been  put  up  in  various 
churches  in  the  country,  and,  as  I  have  been  informed,  with  the 
best  possible  effect.  Of  what  value,  it  may  be  asked,  are  auditors 
who  come  there  from  such  motives  ?  But  our  first  business  seems 
to  be,  to  bring  them  there  from  any  motive  which  is  not  undigni- 
fied and  ridiculous,  and  then  to  keep  them  there  from  a  good  one : 
those  who  come  for  pleasure  may  remain  for  prayer. 

Pious  and  worthy  clergymen  are  ever  apt  to  imagine  that  man- 
kind are  what  they  ought  to  be — to  mistake  the  duty  for  the  fact 
• — to  suppose  that  religion  can  never  weary  its  votaries — that  the 
same  novelty  and  ornament  which  are  necessary  to  enforce  every 
temporal  doctrine  are  wholly  superfluous  in  rehgious  admonition ; 
and  that  the  world  at  large  consider  religion  as  the  most  important 
of  all  concerns,  merely  because  it  is  so :  whereas,  if  we  refer  to 
facts,  the  very  reverse  appears  to  be  the  case.  Every  considera- 
tion influences  the  mind  in  a  comjiound  ratio  of  the  importance  of 
the  effects  which  it  involves,  and  their  proximity.  A  man  who 
was  sure  to  die  a  death  of  torture  in  ten  years  would  think  more 
of  the  most  trifling  gratification  or  calamity  of  the  day  than  of  his 
torn  flesh  and  twisted  nerves  years  hence.  If  we  were  to  read 
the  gazette  of  a  naval  victory  from  the  j^ulpit,  we  should  be  daz- 
zled with  the  eager  eyes  of  our  audience  —  they  would  sit  througli 
an  earthquake  to  hear  us.  The  cry  of  a  child,  the  fall  of  a  book, 
the  most  trifling  occurrence  is  sufficient  to  dissipate  religious 
thought,  and  to  introduce  a  more  willing  train  of  ideas  :  a  sparrow 
fluttering  about  the  church  is  an  antagonist  which  the  most  pro- 
found theologian  in  Europe  is  wholly  unable  to  overcome.  A 
clergyman  has  so  little  previous  disposition  to  attention  in  his  favour, 
that,  without  the  utmost  efforts,  he  can  neither  excite  it  nor  preserve 
it  when  excited.  It  is  his  business  to  awaken  mankind  by  every 
means  in  his  power,  and  to  show  them  their  true  interest.  If  he 
despise  energy  of  manner  and  labour  of  composition,  from  a  con- 
viction that  his  audience  are  willing,  and  that  his  subject  alone  will 
support  him,  ho  will  only  add  lethargy  to  languor,  and  confirm  the 


CHIIISTIAN    CHARITY.  261 

drowsiness  of  his  hearers  by  becoming  a  great  example  of  sleep 
himself. 

That  many  greater  causes  are  at  work  to  undermine  religion  1 
seriously  believe ;  but  I  shall  probably  be  laughed  at  when  I  say 
that  warm  churches,  solemn  music,  animated  preaching  upon 
practical  subjects,  and  a  service  some  httle  abridged,  would  be  no 
contemptible  seconds  to  the  just,  necessary,  and  innumerable  in- 
vectives  which  have  been  levelled  against  Rousseau,  Voltaire, 
D'Alembert,  and  the  whole  pandemonium  of  those  martyrs  to 
atheism  Avho  toiled  with  such  laborious  malice,  and  suffered  odium 
with  such  inflexible  profligacy,  for  the  wretchedness  and  despair 
of  their  fellow-creatures. 

I  have  merely  expressed  what  appears  to  me  to  be  the  truth  in 
these  remarks.  I  hope  I  shall  not  give  offence ;  I  am  sure  I  do 
not  mean  to  do  it.  Some  allowance  should  be  made  for  the  severity 
of  censure  when  the  provident  satirist  furnishes  the  raw  material 
for  his  own  art,  and  commits  every  fault  which  he  blames. 


AN    ILLUSTRATION.* 

The  sun  is  now  fallen  in  the  heavens,  and  the  habitations  of 
men  are  shaded  in  gross  darkness.  That  sun  is  hastening  onward 
to  other  climates,  to  carry  to  all  tongues,  and  people,  and  nations 
the  splendour  of  day.  What  scenes  of  mad  ambition  and  of 
bleeding  war  will  it  witness  in  its  course.  What  cruel  stripes ; 
what  iron  bondage  of  the  human  race  ;  what  debasing  superstition  ; 
what  foul  passions ;  what  thick  and  dismal  ignorance !  It  will 
beam  upon  the  savage  and  sensual  Moor ;  it  will  lighten  the  robber 
of  Arabia  to  his  prey ;  it  will  glitter  on  the  chains  of  the  poor 
negro.  It  will  waken  the  Indian  of  the  ocean  to  eat  the  heart  of 
his  captive.  The  bigot  Turk  will  hail  it  from  the  summit  of  his 
mosque ;  it  will  guide  the  Brahmin  to  his  wooden  gods ;  but  in  all 
its  course  it  will  witness  perhaps  no  other  spectacle  of  a  free, 
rational  people,  gathered  together  under  the  influence  of  Revela- 
tion, to  lighten  the  load  of  human  misery,  and  to  give  of  their 
possessions  to  the  afflicted,  and  the  poor. 

*  From  a  Sermon  preached  for  the  Scotch  Lying-in  Hospital,  at  Eainburgh 


262  THY  SEEVANT  A  MAN. 

TREATMENT  OF  SERVANTS.* 

Unchristianlike  conduct  to  servants  does  not  always  proceed 
from  a  bad  heart ;  many  are  guilty  of  it  who  have  much  of  com- 
passion and  goodness  in  their  natui'e ;  but  it  seems  to  proceed 
from  a  notion  early  imbibed,  never  effectually  checked,  and  aided 
by  our  natural  indolence  and  jiride,  that  a  sense  of  those  injuries 
which  are  conveyed  by  manner  and  expression,  is  almost  exclu- 
sively confined  to  those  whose  minds  are  refined  by  education,  or 
whose  condition  is  ennobled  by  birth  ;t  but  in  spite  of  all  the  ills 
which  poverty  can  inflict,  no  human  being  is  base  or  abject  in  his 
own  eyes.  Without  wealth,  or  beauty,  or  learning,  or  fame,  nay, 
without  one  soul  in  all  the  earth  that  harbours  a  thought  of  him, 
without  a  place  where  to  lay  his  head,  loathsome  from  disease,  and 
shunned  by  men,  the  poorest  outcast  has  still  something  for  which 
he  cherishes  and  fosters  himself;  he  has  still  some  one  pride  in 
reserve,  and  you  may  still  make  his  tears  more  bitter,  and  his 
heart  more  heavy  ;  do  not  then  take  away  from  men  Avho  give  you 
their  labour  for  their  bread,  those  feelings  of  self-complacency 
which  are  dear  to  all  conditions,  but  doubly  dear  to  this ;  do  not 
take  away  that  from  thy  poor  brother,  which  cheers  him  in  his  toil, 
which  gives  him  a  light  heart,  and  wipes  the  sweat  from  his  brow ; 
and  be  thou  good  and  kind  to  him,  and  speak  gentle  words  to  him, 
for  the  strength  of  his  youth  is  thine,  and  remember  there  is  above 
a  God,  whom  thou  cannot  ask  to  pardon  thy  follies,  and  thy 
crimes,  if  thou  forgivest  not  also  the  trespasses  which  are  done 
against  thee. 

*  From  a  Sermon  on  the  Treatment  of  Servants. 

t  The  Rev.  Charles  Kingsley,  in  one  of  his  practical  religious  discourses,  a 
lecture  on  "  The  Country  Parish/'  after  describing  the  rough-shod  benevo- 
lence of  certain  tempers  in  intercourse  with  the  poor,  says  finely,  of  tlie 
opposite  traits  in  the  character  of  Sydney  Smith  :  "  The  love  and  admiration 
which  that  truly  brave  and  loving  man  won  from  every  one,  rich  or  poor, 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact,  seems  to  me  to  have  arisen  from  tlie  one  fact, 
that  without,  perhaps  having  any  such  conscious  intention,  he  treated  rich 
and  poor,  his  own  servants,  and  the  noblemen,  his  guests,  alike,  and  alike 
courteously,  considerately,  cheerfully,  affectionately  —  so  leaving  a  blessing, 
and  reaping  a  blessing,  wheresoever  he  went." — Lectures  to  Ladies  on  Prac- 
tical Subjects 


PLEASURES   OF  LIGHT.  263 

THE    BLIND.* 

Consider  the  deplorable  union  of  indigence  and  blindness,  and 
what  manner  of  life  it  is  from  which  you  are  rescuing  these  un- 
happy people ;  the  blind  man  comes  out  in  the  morning  season  to 
cry  aloud  for  his  food ;  when  he  hears  no  longer  the  feet  of  men 
he  knows  that  it  is  night,  and  gets  him  back  to  the  silence  and 
the  famine  of  his  cell.  Active  poverty  becomes  rich ;  labour  and 
prudence  are  rewarded  with  distinction :  the  weak  of  the  earth 
have  risen  up  to  be  strong ;  but  he  is  ever  dismal,  and  ever  for- 
saken !  The  man  who  comes  back  to  his  native  city  after  years 
of  absence,  beholds  again  the  same  extended  hand  into  which  he 
cast  his  boyish  alms ;  the  self-same  spot,  the  old  attitude  of  sad- 
ness, the  ancient  cry  of  sorrow,  the  intolerable  sight  of  a  human 
being  that  has  grown  old  in  supphcating  a  miserable  support  for  a 
helpless,  mutilated  frame  —  such  is  the  life  these  unfortunate 
children  would  lead,  had  they  no  friend  to  appeal  to  your  compas- 
sion—  such  are  the  evils  we  will  continue  to  remedy,  if  they  ex- 
perience from  you  that  compassion  which  their  magnitude  so  amply 
deserves. 

The  author  of  the  book  of  Ecclesiastes  has  told  us  that  the  light 
is  sweet,  that  it  is  a  pleasant  thing  for  the  eyes  to  behold  the  sun  ; 
the  sense  of  sight  is,  indeed,  the  highest  bodily  privilege,  the 
purest  physical  pleasure,  which  man  has  derived  from  his  Creator : 
To  see  that  wandering  fire,  after  he  has  finished  his  journey 
through  the  nations,  coming  back  to  us  in  the  eastern  heavens  ;  the 
mountains  painted  with  light ;  the  floating  splendour  of  the  sea ; 
the  earth  waking  from  deep  slumber ;  the  day  flowing  down  the 
sides  of  the  hills,  till  it  reaches  the  secret  valleys ;  the  little  insect 
recalled  to  life ;  the  bird  trying  her  wings  ;  man  going  forth  to  his 
labour ;  each  created  being  moving,  thinking,  acting,  contriving 
according  to  the  scheme  and  compass  of  its  nature ;  by  force,  by 
cunning,  by  reason,  by  necessity — is  it  possible  to  joy  in  this 
animated  scene  and  feel  no  pity  for  the  sons  of  darkness  ?  for  the 
eyes  that  will  never  taste  the  sweet  light  ?  for  the  poor,  clouded  in 
everlasting  gloom  ?  If  you  ask  me  why  they  are  miserable  and 
dejected,  I  turn  you  to  the  plentiful  valleys ;  to  the  fields  now 
brmging  forth  their  increase ;  to  the  freshness  and  the  flowers  of 

*  From  a  Charity  Sermon  for  the  Blind,  at  Edinburgh. 


264  TEUTH. 

the  earth ;  to  the  endless  variety  of  its  colours ;  to  the  grace,  the 
symmetry,  the  shape  of  all  it  cherishes,  and  all  it  bears  ;  these  you 
have  forgotten  because  you  have  always  enjoyed  them ;  but  these 
are  the  means  by  which  God  Almighty  makes  man  what  he  is 
cheerful,  hvely,  erect ;  full  of  enterprise,  mutable,  glancing  from 
Heaven  to  earth ;  prone  to  labour  and  to  act.  Why  was  not  the 
earth  left  without  form  and  void  ?  Why  was  not  darkness  suffered 
to  remain  on  the  face  of  the  deep  ?  Why  did  God  place  lights  in 
the  firmament  for  days,  for  seasons,  for  signs,  and  for  years  ?  that 
he  might  make  man  the  happiest  of  beings,  that  he  might  give  to 
this  his  favourite  creation  a  wider  scope,  a  more  permanent  dura- 
tion ;  a  richer  diversity  of  joy :  this  is  the  reason  why  the  blind 
are  miserable  and  dejected,  because  their  soul  is  mutilated  and 
dismembered  of  its  best  sense ;  because  they  are  a  laughter  and  a 
ruin,  and  the  boys  of  the  streets  mock  at  their  stumbling  feet; 
therefore  I  implore  you,  by  the  Son  of  David,  have  mei-cy  on  the 
bhnd :  if  there  is  not  pity  for  all  sorrows,  turn  the  full  and  perfect 
man  to  meet  the  inclemency  of  fate :  let  not  those  who  have  never 
tasted  the  pleasures  of  existence,  be  assailed  by  any  of  its  sorrows  ; 
the  eyes  which  are  never  gladdened  by  hght  should  never  stream 
with  tears.* 


ON    TRUTH. 

Upon  truth  rests  all  human  knowledge :  to  truth  man  is  indebt- 
ed for  the  hourly  preservation  of  his  life,  and  for  a  perpetual  guide 
to  his  actions ;  without  truth  the  affairs  of  the  world  could  no 
longer  exist,  as  they  now  are,  than  they  could  if  any  of  the  great 
physical  laws  of  the  universe  were  suspended.  As  truth  is  of  in- 
dispensable necessity  in  the  gi-eat  concerns  of  the  world,  it  is  also 
of  immense  importance  as  it  relates  to  the  common  and  daily  inter- 
course of  hfe.  Falsehood  must  have  a  direct  and  powerful  ten- 
dency to  disturb  the  order  of  human  affairs,  and  to  introduce  into 
the  bosom  of  society  every  gi-adation  and  variety  of  mischief. 

There  is  a  natural  tendency  in  all  men  to  speak  the  truth,  be- 
cause it  is  absolutely  necessary  we  should  inform  ourselves  of  the 
truth  for  the  common  purposes  of  existence,  and  we  do  not  say  one 

*"This  passage,"  Lady  Holland  remarks,  "was  greatly  admired  by 
Dugald  Stewart." 


A   LIAR.  2G5 

thing  while  we  know  another,  but  foi'  the  intervention  of  causes 
which  ai*e  comparatively  infrequent  and  extraordinary ;  the  first 
of  these  which  I  shall  mention  is  vanity.  The  vanity  of  being  in- 
teresting, of  exciting  curiosity,  and  escaping  from  the  pain  of  ob- 
scurity:—  Great  pai't  of  the  mischief  done  to  character,  and  of 
those  calumnies  which  ruffle  the  quiet  of  life,  liave  theh'  origin  in 
this  source ^ 

There  is  a  Uar,  who  is  not  so  much  a  liar  fi-om  vanity  as  from 
warmth  of  imagination,  and  levity  of  understanding ;  such  a  man 
has  so  thorouglily  accustomed  his  mind  to  extraordinary  combina- 
tions of  cii'cumstances,  that  he  is  disgusted  with  the  insipidity  of 
any  probable  event ;  the  power  of  changing  the  whole  course  of 
nature  is  too  fascinating  for  resistance ;  every  moment  must  pro- 
duce rare  emotions,  and  stimulate  high  passions ;  life  must  be  a 
series  of  zests,  and  relishes,  and  provocations,  and  languishing  ex- 
istence be  refreshed  by  daily  miracles :  In  the  meantime,  the  dig- 
nity of  man  passes  away,  the  bloom  of  Heaven  is  effaced,  friends 
vanish  from  this  degraded  har ;  he  can  no  longer  raise  the  look 
of  wonder,  but  is  heard  in  deep,  dismal,  contemptuous  silence ;  he 
is  shrunk  from  and  abhorred,  and  lives  to  witness  a  gradual  con- 
spiracy against  him  of  all  that  is  good  and  honourable,  and  wise 
and  great. 

Fancy  and  vanity  are  not  the  only  parents  of  falsehood — the 
worst,  and  the  blackest  species  of  it,  has  its  origin  in  fraud — and, 
for  its  object,  to  obtain  some  advantage  in  the  common  intercourse 
of  life.  Though  this  kind  of  falsehood  is  the  most  pernicious,  in  its 
consequences,  to  the  religious  character  of  him  who  is  infected  by 
it ;  and  the  most  detrimental  to  the  general  happiness  of  society,  it 
requires  (from  the  universal  detestation  in  which  it  is  held),  less 
notice  in  an  investigation  of  the  nature  of  truth,  intended  for  prac- 
tical purposes.  He  whom  the  dread  of  universal  infamy,  the 
horror  of  being  degraded  fi-om  his  rank  in  society,  the  thought 
of  an  hereafter  will  not  inspire  with  the  love  of  truth  —  who  prefei's 
any  temjiorary  convenience  of  a  lie,  to  a  broad,  safe,  and  refulgent 
veracity — that  man  is  too  far  sunk  in  the  depths  of  depravity  for  any 
reUgious  instruction  he  can  receive  in  this  place — the  canker  of 
disease  is  gone  down  to  the  fountains  of  his  blood,  and  the  days  of 
his  life  are  told. 

Truth  is  sacrificed  to  a  greater  variety  of  causes  than  the  nar- 

12 


266  FAITH. 

row  limits  of  u  discourse  from  the  ^«lpit  will  allow  me  to  state— 
it  is  sacrificed  to  boasting,  to  malice,  and  to  all  the  varieties  of 
hatred — it  is  sacrificed,  also,  to  that  verbal  benevolence  which  de- 
lights in  the  pleasure  of  j)romising,  as  much  as  it  shrinks  from  the 
pain  of  performing,  which  abounds  in  gratuitous  sympathy,  and  has 
words,  and  words  only,  for  every  human  misfortune. 

I  have  hitherto  considered  the  love  of  truth  on  the  negative  side 
only,  as  it  indicates  what  we  are  not  to  do  —  the  vices  from  which 
we  are  to  abstain ;  but  there  is  an  heroic  faith  —  a  courageous 
love  of  truth,  the  truth  of  the  Christian  warrior — an  unconquer- 
able love  of  justice,  that  would  burst  the  heart  in  twain,  if  it  had 
not  vent — which  makes  women  men — and  men  saints  —  and  saints 
angels.  Often  it  has  published  its  creed  from  amid  the  flames  — 
often  it  has  reasoned  under  the  axe,  and  gathered  firmness  from 
a  mangled  body  —  often  it  has  rebuked  the  madness  of  the  people 
—  often  it  has  burst  into  the  chambers  of  imnces,  to  tear  down  the 
veil  of  falsehood,  and  to  speak  of  guilt,  of  sorrow,  and  of  death. 
Such  was  the  truth  which  went  down  with  Shadi-ach  to  the  fiery 
furnace,  and  descended  with  Daniel  to  the  lion's  den.  Such  was 
the  truth  Avhich  made  the  potent  Felix  tremble  at  his  eloquent 
captive.  Such  was  the  truth  which  roused  the  timid  Peter  to 
preach  Christ  crucified  before  the  Sanhedrim  of  the  Jews — and 
such  was  the  truth  which  enabled  that  Christ,  whom  he  did  preach, 
to  die  the  death  upon  the  cross 

"We  shall  love  truth  better  if  we  beheve  that  falsehood  is  use- 
less ;  and  we  shall  believe  falsehood  to  be  useless  if  we  entertain 
the  notion  that  it  is  difficult  to  deceive ;  the  fact  is  (and  there  can 
\e  no  greater  security  for  well  doing  than  such  an  opinion),  that  it 
5  almost  impossible  to  deceive  the  great  variety  of  talent,  informa- 
tion, and  opinion,  of  which  the  world  is  comjDOsed.  Truth  prevails, 
by  the  universal  combination  of  all  things  animate,  or  inanimate, 
against  falsehood ;  for  ignorance  makes  a  gross  and  clumsy  fiction ; 
carelessness  omits  some  feature  of  a  fiction  that  is  ingenious ;  bad 
fellowship  in  fraud  betraj^s  the  secret ;  conscience  bursts  it  into 
atoms  ;  the  subtlety  of  angry  revenge  unravels  it ;  mere  brute,  un- 
conspiring  matter  reveals  it ;  death  lets  in  the  light  of  truth ;  all 
things  teach  a  wise  man  the  difficulty  and  bad  success  of  falsehood ; 
and  truth  is  inculcated  by  human  policy,  as  well  as  by  Divine 
command. 


EICHES.  267 

The  highest  motive  to  the  cultivation  of  truth,  is,  that  God  re- 
quires it  of  us ;  he  requires  it  of  us,  because  falsehood  is  contrary 
to  his  nature — because  the  spirit  of  man,  before  it  can  do  hom- 
age to  its  Creator,  must  be  purified  in  the  furnace  of  truth.  There 
is  no  more  noble  trial  for  him  who  seeks  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
than  to  speak  the  truth ;  often  the  truth  brings  upon  him  much  sor- 
row ;  often  it  threatens  him  with  poverty,  with  banishment,  with 
hatred,  with  loss  of  friends,  with  miserable  old  age  ;  but,  as  one 
friend  loveth  another  friend  the  more  if  they  had  suffered  together 
in  a  long  sorrow,  so  the  soul  of  a  just  man,  for  all  he  endures, 
clings  nearer  to  the  truth ;  he  mocks  the  fury  of  the  people,  and 
laughs  at  the  oppressor's  rod ;  and  if  needs  be,  he  sitteth  down 
like  Job  in  the  ashe^,  and  God  makes  his  morsel  of  bread  sweeter 
than  the  feasts  of  the  liar,  and  all  the  banquets  of  sin. 


ON  RICHES. 

It  is  difficult  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
The  first  cause  to  be  alleged  for  this  difficulty  is,  that  he  wants 
that  important  test  of  his  own  conduct,  which  is  to  be  gained  from 
the  conduct  of  his  fellow-creatures  toward  him  ;  he  may  be  going 
far  from  the  kingdom  of  God,  on  the  feet  of  pride,  and  over  the 
spoils  of  injustice,  without  learning,  from  the  averted  looks,  and 
the  alienated  hearts  of  men,  that  his  ways  are  the  ways  of  death. 
Wealth  is  apt  to  inspire  a  kind  of  awe,  which  fashions  every  look, 
modulates  every  word,  and  influences  every  action ;  and  this,  not 
so  much  from  any  view  to  interest,  as  from  that  imposing  superi- 
ority, exercised  upon  the  imagination  by  prosperous  fortune,  from 
which  it  is  extremely  difficult  for  any  man  to  emancipate  himself, 
who  has  not  steadily  accustomed  his  judgment  to  measure  his  fel- 
low-creatures by  real,  rather  than  artificial  distinctions,  and  to 
appeal  from  the  capricious  judgments  of  the  world  to  his  o^ti 
reflections,  and  to  the  clear  and  indisputable  precepts  of  the 
Gospel. 

The  general  presumption,  indeed,  which  we  are  apt  to  form,  is, 
that  the  mischief  is  already  done  ;  that  the  rich  man  has  been  ac- 
customed *to  such  flattering  reception,  such  gracious  falsehoods, 
and  such  ingenious  deceit,  that  to  treat  him  justly,  is  to  treat  him 
harshly ;  and,  to  defer  to  him  only  in  the  proportion  of  his  merit 


268  DIVES. 

is  a  violation  of  established  forms.  No  man  feels  it  to  be  Ms  duty 
to  combat  with  tlie  gigantic  errors  of  the  world,  and  to  exalt  himself 
into  a  champion  of  righteousness ;  he  leaves  the  state  of  society 
just  as  he  found  it,  and  indolently  contributes  his  quota  of  deceit, 
to  make  the  life  of  a  human  being  a  huge  falsehood  from  the 
cradle  to  the  tomb.  It  is  this  which  speaks  to  Dives  the  false 
history  of  his  shameless  and  pampered  life; — here  it  is,  in  the 
deceitful  mirror  of  the  human  face,  that  he  sees  the  high  gifts 
with  which  God  has  endowed  him ;  and  here  it  is,  in  that  mirror, 
so  dreadfully  just  to  guilty  poverty,  he  may  come  back,  after  he 
has  trampled  on  every  principle  of  honour  and  justice,  and  see 
joy,  and  delight,  and  unbounded  hospitality,  and  unnumbered 
friends.  Therefore,  I  say  to  you,  when  you  enter  in  among  your 
fellows,  in  the  pomp,  and  plenitude  of  wealth — when  the  meek 
eye  of  poverty  falls  before  you  —  when  all  men  listen  to  your 
speech,  and  the  approving  smile  is  ready  to  break  forth  on  every 
brow — then  keep  down  your  rising  heart,  and  humble  yourself 
before  your  father  who  seeth  in  secret ;  then  fear  very  greatly 
for  your  salvation ;  then  tremble  more  than  Felix  trembled ; 
then  remember  that  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye 
of  a  needle,  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. 

The  second  reason  why  it  so  difficult  for  a  rich  man  to  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God  is,  that  he  loves  the  kingdom  of  the 
world  too  well.  Death  is  very  terrible,  says  the  son  of  Sirach,  to 
him  who  lives  at  ease  in  his  possessions ;  and  in  truth  the  pleas- 
ure of  life  does,  in  a  great  measure,  depend  upon  the  lot  which 
we  draw,  and  the  heritage  which  we  enjoy ;  it  may  be  urged,  that 
a  person  who  knows  no  other  situation,  wishes  no  other ;  and  that 
the  boundary  of  his  experience  is  the  boundary  of  his  desire. 
This  would  be  true  enough  if  we  did  not  derive  our  notions  of 
happiness  and  misery  from  a  wider  range  of  observation  than  our 
own  destiny  can  afford ;  I  will  not  speak  of  great  misfortunes,  for 
such  instances  prove  put  too  clearly,  how  much  the  love  of  life 
depends  on  the  enjoyment  it  affords; — but  a  man  who  is  the 
eternal  prey  of  solicitude,  wishes  for  the  closing  of  the  scene ;  a 
constant,  cheerless  struggle  with  little  miseries,  will  dim  the  sun, 
and  wither  the  green  herb,  and  taint  the  fresh  wind ; — he  will 
cry  out,  let  me  depart — he  will  count  his  gray  hairs  with  joy,  and 


DANGERS   OF   WEALTH,  269 

one  day  will  seem  unto  bim  as  many.  Those  who  are  not  re- 
minded of  the  wretchedness  of  human  existence  by  such  reflec- 
tions as  these,  who  are  born  to  luxury  and  respect,  and  sheltered 
from  the  various  perils  of  poverty,  begin  to  forget  the  precarious 
tenure  of  worldly  enjoyments,  and  to  build  sumptuously  on  the 
sand ;  they  put  their  trust  (as  the  Psalmist  says)  in  chariots  and 
horses,  and  dream  they  shall  live  for  ever  in  those  palaces  which 
are  but  the  outhouses  of  the  grave.  There  are  very  few  men,  in 
fact,  who  are  capable  of  withstanding  the  constant  effect  of  arti- 
ficial distinctions ;  it  is  difficult  to  live  upon  a  throne,  and  to  think 
of  a  tomb ;  it  is  difficult  to  be  clothed  in  splendour,  and  to  re- 
member we  are  dust;  it  is  difficult  for  the  rich  and  the  prosperous 
to  keep  their  hearts  as  a  burning  coal  upon  the  altar,  and  to  humble 
themselves  before  God  as  they  rise  before  men.  In  the  mean- 
time, while  pride  gathers  in  the  heart,  the  angel  is  ever  Avriting  in 
the  book,  and  wrath  is  ever  mantling  in  the  cup ;  complain  not  in 
the  season  of  wo,  that  you  are  parched  with  thirst ;  ask  not  for 
water,  as  Dives  asked,  you  have  a  warning  which  he  never  had. 
There  stand  the  ever-memorable  words  of  the  text,  which  break 
down  the  stateliness  of  man,  and  dissipate  the  pageantry  of  the 
earth ; — thus  it  is  that  the  few  words  of  a  God  can  make  the  purple 
of  the  world  appear  less  beautiful  than  the  mean  garments  of  a 
beggar,  and  striking  terror  into  the  hearts  of  rulers  and  of  ex- 
archs, turn  the  banners  of  dominion  to  the  ensigns  of  death,  and 
make  them  shudder  at  the  sceptre  which  they  wield.  To-day, 
you  are  clothed  in  fine  linen,  and  fare  sumptuously ;  in  a  few  and 
evil  years,  they  shall  hew  you  out  a  tomb  of  marble,  whiter  than 
snow,  and  the  cunning  artifice  of  the  workman  shall  grave  on  it 
weeping  angels,  and  make  a  dehcate  image  of  one  fleeing  up  to 
heaven,  as  if  it  were  thee,  and  shall  relate  in  golden  letters,  the 
long  story  of  your  honours  and  your  birth  —  thou  fool ! !  He  that 
dieth  by  the  I'oadside  for  the  lack  of  a  morsel  of  bread,  God  loveth 
him  as  well  as  he  loveth  thee  ;  and  at  the  gates  of  heaven,  and 
from  the  blessed  angels,  thou  shalt  learn,  that  it  is  easier  for  a 
camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a  needle,  than  for  a  rich  man  to 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

Another  fatal  effect  of  great  wealth  is,  that  it  is  apt  to  harden 
the  heart  ;  wealth  gives  power  ;  power  produces  immediate  grati- 
fication ;  the  long  habit  of  immediate  gratification,  an  impatience 


270  THE   JOUENEY   OF  LIFE. 

of  unpleasant  feelings ;  a  claim  to  be  exempted  from  the  contem- 
plation of  human  misery,  of  everything  calculated  to  inspire 
gloom,  to  pollute  enjoyment,  and  protrude  a  sense  of  painful 
duties ;  the  compassion  with  which  prosperous  men  are  born  in 
common  with  us  all,  is  never  cherished  by  a  participation  in  the 
common  suffering,  a  share  in  the  general  struggle ;  it  wants  that 
sense  of  the  difficulty  and  wretchedness  of  existence,  by  which  we 
obtain  the  best  measure  of  the  suffei'ings  of  our  fellow-creatures. 
We  talk  of  human  hfe  as  a  journey,  but  how  variously  is  that 
journey  performed?  th^''*'  are  some  who  come  forth  girt,  and 
shod,  and  mantled,  to  waxfc  on  velvet  lawns,  and  smooth  terraces, 
where  every  gale  is  arrested,  and  every  beam  is  tempered ;  there 
are  others  who  walk  on  the  alpine  paths  of  life,  against  driving 
misery,  and  through  stormy  sorrows ;  and  over  sharp  afflictions, 
walk  with  bare  feet  and  naked  breast,  jaded,  mangled,  and  chilled. 
It  is  easy  enough  to  talk  of  misfortunes ;  that  they  exist,  no  man 
can  be  ignorant ;  it  is  not  the  bare  knowledge  of  them  that  is 
wanting,  but  that  pungent,  vital  commiseration,  under  the  influence 
of  which  a  man  springs  up  from  the  comforts  of  his  home,  deserts 
his  favourite  occupations,  toils,  invents,  investigates,  struggles, 
wades  through  perplexity,  disappointiiient,  and  disgust,  to  save  a 
human  being  from  shame,  poverty,  and  destruction :  here  then  is 
the  jet,  and  object  of  our  blessed  Saviour's  menace ;  and  reason- 
able enough  it  is  that  he  who  practically  withdi-aws  himself  from 
the  great  Christian  community  of  benevolence,  should  be  cut  off 
from  the  blessings  of  Christian  reward.  If  we  suffer  ourselves  to 
be  so  infatuated  by  the  enjoyments  of  this  world,  as  to  forget  the 
imperious  claims  of  affliction,  and  to  render  our  minds,  from  the 
long  habit  of  selfish  gratification,  incapable  of  fulfilling  the  duties 
we  owe  to  mankind,  then  let  us  not  repine,  that  our  lot  ceases 
in  this  world,  or  that  the  rich  man  shall  never  inherit  immortal 
life. 

As  to  that  confidence  and  pride  of  which  riches  are  too  oflen 
the  source,  what  can  the  constitution  of  that  mind  be,  which  has 
formed  these  notions  of  Divine  wisdom  and  justice  ?  Was  this  in- 
equality of  possessions  contrived  for  the  more  solid  establishment 
of  human  happiness,  that  there  might  be  gradation  and  subordina 
tion  among  men?  or  was  it  instituted  to  give  an  arbitraxy  and  use 
less  superiority  of  one  human  being  over  another?     Are  any 


USES  OF  WEALTH.  271 

duties  exacted  for  the  good  conferred  ?  or  was  a  ricli  man  only 
born  to  sleep  quietly,  to  fare  sumptuously,  and  to  be  clothed  in 
brave  apparel  ?  Has  He,  who  does  not  create  a  particle  of  dust 
but  it  has  its  use,  has  He,  do  you  imagine,  formed  one  human 
being  merely  as  a  receptable  of  choice  fruits  and  delicate  viands ; 
and  has  He  stationed  a  thousand  others  about  him,  of  the  same 
flesh  and  blood,  that  they  might  pick  up  the  crumbs  of  his  table, 
and  gratify  the  wishes  of  his  heart  ?  No  man  is  mad  enough  to 
acknowledge  such  an  opinion ;  but  many  enjoy  wealth  as  if  they 
had  no  other  notion  respecting  it  than  that  they  were  to  extract 
from  it  the  greatest  enjoyment  possible,  to  eat  and  drink  to-day, 
and  to  mock  at  the  threatened  death  of  to-morrow. 

The  command  of  our  Saviour  to  the  rich  man,  was,  "  Go  thy  way 
quickly,  sell  all  thou  hast,  divide  it  among  the  poor,  and  take  up 
thy  cross  and  follow  me ;"  but  this  precept  of  our  blessed  Lord, 
as  it  was  intended  only  for  the  interests  of  the  Gospel,  and  the 
state  of  the  world  at  that  period,  cannot  be  considered  as  appli- 
cable to  the  present  condition  of  mankind ;  to  preach  such  exalted 
doctrine  in  these  latter  days,  would,  I  am  afraid,  at  best  be  use- 
less ;  our  object  is  to  seek  for  some  fair  medium  between  selfish- 
ness and  enthusiasm.  If  something  of  great  possessions  be  dedi- 
cated to  inspire  respect,  and  preserve  the  gradations  of  society,  a 
part  to  the  real  wants,  a  little  to  the  ornaments  and  supex'fluities 
of  life,  a  httle  even  to  the  infirmities  of  the  possessor,  how  much 
will  remain  for  the  unhappy,  who  ask  only  a  preference  over 
vicious  pleasure,  disgraceful  excess,  and  idle  ostentation. 

Neither  is  it  to  objects  only  of  individual  misery,  that  the  ap- 
plication of  wealth  is  to  be  confined ;  whatever  has  for  its  object 
to  enlarge  human  knowledge,  or  to  jiropagate  moral  and  religious 
principle ;  whatever  may  effect,  immediately  or  remotely,  directly 
or  indirectly,  the  public  happiness,  may  add  to  the  comforts,  re- 
press the  crimes,  or  animate  the  virtues  of  social  life ;  to  every 
sacred  claim  of  this  nature,  the  appetite  for  frivolous  pleasure,  and 
the  passion  for  frivolous  display,  must  implicitly  yield :  if  the 
minutiae  of  individual  charity  present  an  object  too  inconsiderable 
for  a  capacious  mind,  there  are  vast  asylums  for  sickness  and 
want,  which  invite  your  aid ;  breathe  among  their  sad  inhabitants 
the  spirit  of  consolation  and  order,  give  to  them  wiser  arrange- 
ments and  wider  limits,  p-^pare  shelter  for  unborn  wretchedness, 


i2T2  CURE  OF  PRIDE. 

and  medicine  for  future  disease  ;  give  opportunity  to  talents,  and 
scope  to  goodness ;  go  among  the  multitude,  and  see  if  you  can 
drac  from  the  oblivious  heap  some  child  of  God,  some  gift  of 
heaven,  whose  mind  can  burst  through  the  secrets  of  nature,  and 
influence  the  destiny  of  man.  This  is  the  dignified  and  religious 
use  of  riches,  which,  when  they  cherish  boyish  pride,  to  minister 
to  selfish  pleasure,  shall  verily  doom  their  possessor  to  the  flames 
of  hell.  —  But  he  who  knows  wherefore  God  has  given  him  great 
possessions,  he  shall  die  the  death  of  Lazarus,  without  leading  his 
life,  and  rest  in  the  bosom  of  Abraham,  though  he  never  stretched 
forth  his  wounds  to  the  dogs,  nor  gathered  up  the  crumbs  of  the 
table  for  his  food. 

The  best  mode  of  guarding  against  that  indirect  flattery,  which 
is  always  paid  to  wealth,  is  to  impress  the  mind  with  a  thorough 
belief  of  the  fact;  and  to  guard,  by  increased  inward  humility, 
against  the  danger  of  corruption  from  without.  The  wealthy  man 
who  attributes  to  himself  great  or  good  qualities,  from  what  he  con- 
ceives to  be  the  opinion  of  the  world,  exposes  himself  to  dangerous 
errors  ;  on  the  most  important  of  all  subjects,  this  source  of  self- 
judgment  is  for  him  most  eflfectually  poisoned ;  he  must  receive 
such  evidence  with  the  utmost  distrust,  weigh  every  circumstance 
with  caution,  court  animadversion  and  friendly  candour,  and  cherish 
the  man  by  whose  polished  justice  his  feeUngs  are  consulted,  while 
his  foUies  are  repressed. 

For  the  pride  which  is  contracted  by  the  contemplation  of  little 
things,  there  is  no  better  cure  than  the  contemplation  of  great 
things.  Let  a  rich  man  turn  from  his  own  pompous  littleness,  and 
think  of  heaven,  of  eternity,  and  of  salvation  ;  let  him  think  of  all 
the  nations  that  lie  dead  in  the  dust,  waiting  for  the  trumpet  of 
God ;  he  will  smile  at  his  own  brief  authority,  and  be  as  one 
lifted  up  to  a  high  eminence,  to  whom  the  gorgeous  palaces  of  the 
world  are  the  specks  and  atoms  of  the  eye ;  the  great  laws  of  na- 
ture pursue  their  eternal  course,  and  heed  not  the  frail  distinctions 
of  this  life ;  the  fever  spares  not  the  rich  and  the  great ;  the  tem- 
pest does  not  pass  by  them ;  they  are  racked  by  pain,  they  are 
weakened  by  disease,  they  are  broken  by  old  age,  they  are  agonized 
in  death  like  other  men,  they  moulder  in  the  tomb,  they  differ  only 
from  other  men  in  this,  that  God  will  call  them  to  a  more  severe 
account,  that  they  must  come  before  him  with  deeds  of  Christian 


EOMILLY.  273 

cliai'it  J  and  acts  of  righteousness,  equal  to  all  the  ojiportunities  and 
blessings  -which  they  have  enjoyed. 

Let  the  rich  man,  then,  remember,  in  the  midst  of  his  enjoy- 
ments, by  Avhat  slight  tenure  those  enjoyments  are  held.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  common  doubt  which  hangs  over  the  life  of  all  men, 
fresh  perils  lie  hid  in  his  j  leasures,  and  the  very  object  for  which 
he  lives  may  be  the  first  to  terminate  his  existence.  "  Remember 
thou  art  mortal,"  was  said  every  day  to  a  great  king.  So,  after 
the  same  fashion,  I  would  that  a  man  of  great  possessions  should 
frequently  remember  the  end  of  all  things,  and  the  long  home,  and 
the  sleeping-place  of  a  span  in  breadth ;  I  would  have  him  go 
from  under  the  gilded  dome  down  to  the  place  where  they  will 
gather  him  to  the  bones  of  his  fathers ;  he  should  tread  in  the  dust 
of  the  noble,  and  trample  on  the  ashes  of  the  proud ;  I  would  heap 
before  him  sights  of  woe  and  images  of  death  and  terror ;  I  Avould 
break  down  his  stateliness,  and  humble  him  before  his  Redeemer 
and  his  Judge.  My  voice  should  ever  sound  in  his  ears,  that  it  is 
easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a  needle,  than  for  a 
rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 


TRIBUTE    TO    SIR    SAMUEL    ROMILLY.* 

And  let  me  ask  you,  my  bretliren,  we  who  see  the  good  and 
great  daily  perishing  before  our  eyes,  what  comfort  have  we  but 
this  hope  in  Christ  that  we  shall  meet  again?  Remember  the 
eminent  men  who,  within  the  few  years  last  past,  have  paid  the 
great  debt  of  nature.  The  earth  stripped  of  its  moral  grandeur, 
sunk  in  its  spiritual  pride.  The  melancholy  wreck  of  talents  and 
of  wisdom  gone,  my  brethren,  when  we  feel  how  dear,  how  valu- 
able they  were  to  us,  when  we  would  have  asked  of  God,  on  our 
bended  knees,  their  preservation  and  their  life.  Can  we  live  with 
all  that  is  excellent  in  human  nature,  can  we  study  it,  can  we  con- 
template it,  and  then  lose  it,  and  never  hope  to  see  it  again  ? 

Can  we  say  of  any  human  being,  as  we  may  say  of  that  great 
man  who  was  torn  from  us  in  the  beginning  of  this  Avinter,  that  he 
acted  with  vast  capacity  upon  all  the  great  calamities  of  life ;  that 
he  came  with  unblemished  purity  to  restrain  iniquity ;  that,  con- 

*  From  if  sermon  on  Meditation  on  Death.  Romilly,  in  a  fit  of  temporary 
insanity,  brought  on  by  grief  for  the  death  of  his  wife,  committed  suicide, 
November  2,  181S.. 

12* 


274  EDUCATION. 

dermiing  injustice,  lie  was  just ;  that,  restraining  corruption,  he  was 
pure ;  that  those  who  were  provoked  to  look  into  the  life  of  a  great 
statesman,  found  him  a  good  man  also,  and  acknowledged  he  was 
sincere,  even  when  they  did  not  believe  he  was  right  ?  Can  we 
say  of  such  a  man,  with  all  the  career  of  worldly  ambition  before 
him,  that  he  was  the  friend  of  the  wretched  and  the  poor ;  that  in 
the  midst  of  vast  occupation,  he  remembered  the  debtor's  cell,  the 
prisoner's  dungeon,  the  last  hour  of  the  law's  victim ;  that  he  medi- 
tated day  and  night  on  wretchedness,  weakness,  and  want  ?  Can 
we  say  all  this  of  any  human  being,  and  then  have  him  no  more  in 
remembrance  ?  When  you  "  die  daily,"  my  brethren ;  when  you 
remember  my  text,  paint  to  yourselves  the  gathermg  together  again 
of  the  good  and  the  just. 

Remember  that  God  is  to  be  worshipped,  that  death  is  to  be 
met,  by  such  a  life  as  this ;  remember,  in  the  last  hour,  that  rank, 
that  birth,  that  wealth,  that  all  earthly  things  will  vanish  away, 
that  you  will  then  think  only  of  the  wretchedness  you  have  les- 
sened and  the  good  you  have  done. 


POPULAR    EDUCATION.* 

First  and  foremost,  I  think  the  new  Queen  should  bend  her 
mind  to  the  very  serious  consideration  of  educating  the  people. 
Of  the  importance  of  this,  I  think  no  reasonable  doubt  can  exist ; 
it  does  not,  in  its  eifects,  keep  pace  with  the  exaggerated  expecta- 
tions of  its  injudicious  advocates,  but  it  presents  the  best  chance  ot 
national  improvement. 

Reading  and  writing  are  mere  increase  of  power.  They  may 
be  turned,  I  admit,  to  a  good  or  a  bad  purpose ;  but  for  several 
yeai's  of  his  life  the  chUd  is  in  your  hands,  and  you  may  give  to 
that  power  what  bias  you  please  :  thou  shalt  not  kill — thou  shalt 
not  steal — thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness  ; — by  how  many  fables, 
by  how  much  poetry,  by  how  many  beautiful  aids  of  imagination, 
may  not  the  fine  morality  of  the  sacred  Scriptures  be  engraven  on 
the  minds  of  the  young  ?  I  believe  the  arm  of  the  assassin  may 
be  often  stayed  by  the  lessons  of  his  early  life.     When  I  see  the 

*  This  and  the  succeeding  passage  are  from  a  sermon,  preached  at  St. 
Paul's  on  the  accession  of  Victoria,  on  the  Duties  of  the  Queen  —  from  the 
text,  Dan.  iv.  31  •  "  Oh  king,  thy  kingdom  is  departed  from  thee." 


TO   THE   QUEEN.  275 

village-scliool,  and  the  tattered  scholars,  and  the  aged  master  or 
mistress  teaching  the  mechanical  art  of  reading  or  writing,  and 
thinking  that  they  are  teaching  that  alone,  I  feel  that  the  aged  in- 
structor  is  protecting  life,  insuring  property,  fencing  the  altar, 
guarding  the  throne,  giving  space  and  liberty  to  all  the  fine  powers 
of  man,  and  lifting  him  up  to  his  own  place  in  the  order  of  crea- 
tion. 

There  are,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  many  countries  in  Europe,  whicla 
have  taken  the  lead  of  England  in  the  great  business  of  education, 
and  it  is  a  thoroughly  commendable  and  legitimate  object  of  ambi- 
tion in  a  sovereign  to  overtake  them.  The  names,  too,  of  male- 
factors, and  the  nature  of  their  crimes,  are  subjected  to  the  sov- 
ereign; — how  is  it  possible  that  a  sovereign,  with  the  fine  feel- 
ings of  youth,  and  with  all  the  gentleness  of  her  sex,  should  not 
ask  herself,  whether  the  human  being  whom  she  dooms  to  death, 
or  at  least  does  not  rescue  from  death,  has  been  properly  warned 
in  early  youth,  of  the  horrors  of  that  crime  for  which  his  life  is 
forfeited?  "Did  he  ever  receive  any  education  at  all? — did  a 
father  and  mother  watch  over  him? — was  he  brought  to  places  of 
worship? — was  the  Word  of  God  explained  to  him?  —  was  the 
book  of  knowledge  opened  to  him?  —  Or  am  I,  the  fountain  of 
mercy,  the  nursing-mother  of  my  people,  to  send  a  forsaken  wretch 
from  the  streets  to  the  scaffold,  and  to  prevent,  by  unprincipled 
cruelty,  the  evils  of  unprincipled  neglect  ?" 

Many  of  the  objections  found  against  the  general  education  of 
the  people  are  utterly  untenable ;  where  all  are  educated,  educa- 
tion cannot  be  a  source  of  distinction  and  a  subject  for  pride.  The 
great  source  of  labour  is  want ;  and  as  long  as  the  necessities  of 
life  call  for  labour — labour  is  sure  to  be  supplied.  All  these  fears 
are  foolish  and  imaginary ;  the  great  use  and  the  great  importance 
of  education  properly  conducted,  are,  that  it  creates  a  great  bias  in 
favour  of  virtue  and  religion,  at  a  period  of  life  when  the  mind  is 
open  to  all  the  impressions  which  superior  wisdom  may  choose  to 
affix  upon  it ;  the  sum  and  mass  of  these  tendencies  and  inclina- 
tions make  a  good  and  virtuous  people,  and  draw  down  upon  us 
the  bleg5ing  and  protection  of  Almighty  God. 


276  CUESE   OF  WAR. 

WAR. 

A  SECOND  great  object  wliicli  I  hope  will  be  impressed  upon 
the  mind  of  this  royal  lady  is,  a  rooted  horror  of  war — an  earnest 
and  passionate  desire  to  keep  her  people  in  a  state  of  j^rofound 
peace.  The  greatest  curse  which  can  be  entailed  upon  mankind 
is  a  state  of  war.  All  the  atrocious  crimes  committed  in  years  of 
peace  —  all  that  is  spent  in  peace  by  the  secret  corruptions,  or  by 
the  thoughtless  extravagance  of  nations,  are  mere  trifles  compared 
with  the  gigantic  evils  which  stalk  over  the  world  in  a  state  of  war; 
God  is  forgotten  in  war — every  principle  of  Christian  charity 
trampled  upon — human  labour  destroyed — human  industry  ex- 
tinguished;— you  see  the  son,  and  the  husband,  and  the  brother, 
dying  miserably  in  distant  lands — you  see  the  waste  of  human 
affections — you  see  the  breaking  of  human  hearts — you  hear  the 
shrieks  of  widows  and  children  after  the  battle — and  you  walk 
over  the  mangled  bodies  of  the  wounded  calling  for  death.  I  would 
say  to  that  royal  child,  worship  God,  by  loving  peace  —  it  is  not 
your  humanity  to  pity  a  beggar  by  giving  him  food  and  raiment — 
/can  do  that ;  that  is  the  charity  of  the  humble,  and  the  unknown 
— widen  you  your  heart  for  the  more  expanded  miseries  of  man- 
kind—  pity  the  mothers  of  the  peasantry,  who  see  their  sons  torn 
away  from  their  families — pity  your  poor  subjects  crowded  into 
hospitals,  and  calling  in  their  last  breath,  upon  their  distant  coun- 
try and  their  young  queen — pity  the  stupid,  frantic  folly  of  human 
beings,  who  are  always  ready  to  tear  each  other  to  pieces,  and  to 
deluge  the  earth  with  each  other's  blood ;  this  is  your  extended 
humanity — and  this  the  great  field  of  your  compassion.  Extin- 
guish in  your  heart  the  fiendish  love  of  military  glory,  from  which 
your  sex  does  not  necessarily  exempt  you,  and  to  which  the  wick- 
edness of  flatterers  may  urge  you.  Say  upon  your  death-bed,  "  I 
have  made  few  orphans  in  my  reign — I  have  made  few  widows — 
my  object  has  been  peace.  I  have  used  all  the  weight  of  ray  char- 
acter, and  all  the  power  of  my  situation,  to  check  the  irascible 
passions  of  mankind,  and  to  turn  them  to  the  arts  of  honest  indus- 
try :  this  has  been  the  Christianity  of  my  throne,  and  this  the  Gos- 
pel of  my  sceptre  ;  in  this  way  I  have  striven  to  worship  my  Re- 
deemer and  my  Judge." 

I  would  add  (if  any  addition  were  wanted  as  a  part  of  the  lesson 


ALL  MISERY   AND   FOLLY.  277 

to  youthful  royalty),  the  utter  folly  of  all  wars  of  ambition,  where 
the  object  sought  for — if  attained  at  all  —  is  commonly  attained  at 
manifold  its  real  value,  and  often  wrested,  after  short  enjoyment, 
from  its  possessor,  by  the  combined  indignation  and  just  vengeance 
of  the  other  nations  of  the  world.  It  is  all  misery,  and  folly,  and 
impiety,  and  cruelty.  The  atrocities,  and  horrors,  and  disgusts  of 
war,  have  never  been  half  enough  insisted  upon  by  the  teachers  of 
the  people ;  but  the  worst  of  evils  and  the  greatest  of  follies,  have 
been  varnished  over  with  specious  names,  and  the  gigantic  I'obbers 
and  murderers  of  the  world  have  been  holden  up,  for  their  imita- 
tion, to  the  weak  eyes  of  youth.  May  honest  counsellors  keep  this 
poison  from  the  mind  of  the  young  queen.  May  she  love  what 
God  bids,  and  do  what  makes  men  happy ! 


278  CAUSE   OF  UNHAPPINESS. 


ESSAYS  AND  SKETCHES. 


PRACTICAL  ESSAYS.* 
OF    THE  BODY. 


Happiness  is  not  impossible  without  health,  but  it  is  of  very 
difficult  attainment.  I  do  not  mean  by  health  merely  an  absence 
of  dangerous  complaints,  but  that  the  body  should  be  in  perfect 
tune — fuU  of  vigor  and  alacrity. 

The  longer  I  live,  the  more  I  am  convinced  that  the  apothecary 
is  of  more  importance  than  Seneca ;  and  that  half  the  unhappiness 
in  the  world  proceeds  from  little  stoppages,  from  a  duct  choked 
up,  from  food  pressing  in  the  wrong  place,  from  a  vexed  duodenum, 
or  an  agitated  pylorus. 

The  deception,  as  practised  upon  human  creatures,  is  curious 
and  entertaining.  My  friend  sups  late  ;  he  eats  some  strong  soup, 
then  a  lobster,  then  some  tart,  and  he  dilutes  these  esculent  varie- 
ties with  wine.  The  next  day  I  call  upon  him.  He  is  going  to 
sell  his  house  in  London,  and  to  retire  into  the  country.  He  is 
alarmed  for  his  eldest  daughter's  health.  His  expenses  are  hourly 
increasing,  and  nothing  but  a  timely  retreat  can  save  him  from 
ruin.  All  this  is  the  lobster ;  and  when  over-excited  nature  has 
had  time  to  manage  this  testaceous  encumbrance,  the  daughter 
recovers,  the  finances  are  in  good  order,  and  every  rural  idea 
effectually  excluded  from  the  mind. 

In  the  same  manner  old  friendships  are  destroyed  by  toasted 
cheese,  and  hard   salted   meat  has   led  to  suicide.     Unpleasant 

*  Published  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir  as,  "A  few  Unfinished  Sketches 
from  a  Projected  Ser.'.es  of  '  Practical  Essays.'  " 


STUDY   THE   BODY.  279 

feelings  of  the  body  produce  correspondent  sensations  in  tlie  mind, 
and  a  great  scene  of  wretchedness  is  sketched  out  by  a  morsel  of 
mdigestible  and  misguided  food.  Of  such  infinite  consequence 
to  happiness  is  it  to  study  the  body ! 

I  have  notliing  new  to  say  upon  the  management  which  the 
body  requires.  The  common  rules  are  the  best :  exercise  without 
fatigue ;  generous  living  without  excess  ;  early  rising,  and  modera- 
tion in  sleeping.  These  are  the  apothegms  of  old  women  ;  but  if 
they  are  not  attended  to,  happiness  becomes  so  extremely  difficult 
that  very  few  persons  can  attain  to  it.  In  this  point  of  view,  the 
care  of  the  body  becomes  a  subject  of  elevation  and  importance. 
A  walk  in  the  fields,  an  hour's  less  sleep,  may  remove  all  those 
bodily  vexations  and  disquietudes  which  are  such  formidable 
enemies  to  virtue ;  and  may  enable  the  mind  to  pursue  its  own 
resolves  without  that  constant  train  of  temptations  to  resist,  and 
obstacles  to  overcome,  which  it  always  experiences  from  the  bad 
organization  of  its  companion.  Johnson  says,  every  man  is  a 
rascal,  when  he  is  sick  ;  meaning,  I  suppose,  that  he  has  no  benev- 
olent dispositions  at  that  period  toward  his  fellow-creatures,  but 
that  his  notions  assume  a  character  of  greater  affinity  to  his  bodily 
feelings,  and  that,  feeling  pain,  he  becomes  malevolent ;  and  if  this 
be  true  of  great  diseases,  it  is  true  in  a  less  degx-ee  of  the  smaller 
ailments  of  the  body. 

Get  up  in  a  moi'ning,  w^alk  before  breakfast,  pass  four  or  five 
hours  of  the  day  in  some  active  employment ;  then  eat  and  drink 
overnight,  lie  in  bed  till  one  or  two  o'clock,  saunter  away  the  rest 
of  the  day  in  doing  nothing !  —  can  any  two  human  beings  be  more 
perfectly  dissimilar  than  the  same  individual  under  these  two  dif- 
ferent systems  of  corporeal  management  ?  and  is  it  not  of  as  great 
importance  toward  happiness  to  pay  a  minute  attention  to  the  body, 
as  it  is  to  study  the  wisdom  of  Chrysippus  and  Grantor  ? 


OF    OCCUPATION. 

A  GOOD  stout  bodily  machine  being  provided,  we  must  be  act- 
ively occupied,  or  there  can  be  Uttle  happiness. 

If  a  good  useful  occupation  be  not  provided,  it  is  so  ungenial  to 
the  human  mind  to  do  nothing,  that  men  occupy  themselves  j^eriU 
ously,  as  with  gaming:  ov  frivolously,  as  with  walking  up  and  down 


280  OCCUPATION. 

a  street  at  a  watering-place,  and  looking  at  the  passers-by ;  or 
malevolently,  as  by  teazing  tbeir  wives  and  children.  It  is  im- 
possible to  support,  for  any  length  of  time,  a  state  of  perfect  ennui  ; 
and  if  you  were  to  shut  a  man  up  for  any  length  of  time  within 
four  walls,  without  occupation,  he  would  go  mad.  If  idleness  do 
not  produce  vice  or  malevolence,  it  commonly  produces  melancholy. 

A  stockbroker  or  a  farmer  has  no  leisure  for  imaginary  wretch- 
edness ;  their  minds  are  usually  hurried  away  by  the  necessity 
of  noticing  external  objects,  and  they  are  guaranteed  from  that 
curse  of  idleness,  the  eternal  disposition  to  think  of  themselves. 

If  we  have  no  necessary  occupation,  it  becomes  extremely 
difficult  to  make  to  ourselves  occupations  as  entirely  absorbing  as 
those  which  necessity  imposes. 

The  profession  which  a  man  makes  for  himself  is  seldom  more 
than  a  half  profession,  and  often  leaves  the  mind  in  a  state  of 
vacancy  and  inoccupation.  We  must  lash  ourselves  up,  however, 
as  well  as  we  can,  to  a  notion  of  its  great  importance ;  and  as  the 
dispensing  power  is  in  our  own  hands,  we  must  be  very  jealous 
of  remission  and  of  idleness. 

It  may  seem  absurd  that  a  gentleman  who  does  not  Yiv&  by  the 
profits  of  farming  should  rise  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning  to  look 
after  his  farm ;  or,  if  botany  be  his  object,  that  he  should  voyage 
to  Iceland  in  pursuit  of  it.  He  is  the  happier  however  for  his 
eagerness ;  his  mind  is  more  fully  employed,  and  he  is  much  more 
effectually  guaranteed  from  all  the  miseries  of  ennui. 

It  is  asked,  if  the  object  can  be  of  such  great  importance. 
Perhaps  not ;  but  the  pursuit  is.  The  fox,  when  caught,  is  worth 
nothing :  he  is  followed  for  the  pleasure  of  the  following. 

What  is  a  man  to  do  with  his  life  who  has  nothing  which  he 
must  do  ?  It  is  admitted  he  must  find  some  employment,  but  does 
it  signify  what  that  employment  is  ?  Is  he  employed  as  much  for 
his  own  happiness  in  cultivating  a  flower-garden  as  in  philosophy, 
literature,  or  politics  ?  This  must  depend  upon  the  individual 
himself,  and  the  circumstances  in  which  he  is  placed.  As  far  as 
the  mere  occupation  or  exclusion  of  ennui  goes,  this  can  be  settled 
only  by  the  feelings  of  the  person  employed ;  and  if  the  attention 
be  equally  absorbed,  in  this  point  of  view  one  occupation  is  as 
good  as  another ;  but  a  man  who  is  conscious  he  was  capable  of 
doing  great  things,  and  has  occupied  himself  with  trifles  beneath 


FRIENDSHIPS.  281 

the  level  of  his  understanding,  is  apt  to  feel  enyj  at  the  lot  of 
those  who  have  excelled  him,  and  remorse  at  the  misappUcation 
of  his  own  powers  ;  he  has  not  added  to  the  pleasures  of  occupation 
the  pleasures  of  henevolence,  and  so  has  not  made  his  occupation 
as  agreeahle  as  he  might  have  done,  and  he  has  probably  not 
gained  as  much  fame  and  wealth  as  he  might  have  done  if  his 
pursuits  had  been  of  a  higher  nature.  For  these  reasons  it  seems 
right  that  a  man  should  attend  to  the  highest  pursuits  in  Avhich  he 
has  any  fau'  chance  of  excelling ;  he  is  as  much  occupied,  gains  more 
of  what  is  worth  gaining,  and  excludes  remorse  more  effectually, 
even  if  he  fail,  because  he  is  conscious  of  having  made  the  effort. 
When  a  very  clever  man,  or  a  very  great  man,  takes  to  culti 
vating  turnips  and  retiring,  it  is  generally  an  imposture.  The 
moment  men  cease  to  talk  of  their  turnips,  they  are  wretched  and 
fuU  of  self-reproach.  Let  every  man  be  ocmipied,  and  occupied 
in  the  highest  employment  of  which  his  nature  is  capable,  and  die 
with  the  consciousness  that  he  has  done  his  best!" 


OF    FRIENDSHIP. 

Life  is  to  be  fortified  by  many  friendships.  To  love,  and  to 
be  loved,  is  the  greatest  happiness  of  existence.  If  I  lived  under 
the  burning  sun  of  the  equator,  it  would  be  a  pleasure  to  me  to 
think  that  there  were  many  human  beings  on  the  other  side  of  the 
world  who  regarded  and  respected  me ;  I  could  and  would  not 
live  if  I  were  alone  upon  the  earth,  and  cut  off  from  the  remem- 
brance of  my  felloAv-creatures.  It  is  not  that  a  man  has  occasion 
often  to  fall  back  upon  the  kindness  of  his  friends ;  perhaps  he 
may  never  experience  the  necessity  of  doing  so ;  but  we  are  gov- 
erned by  our  imaginations,  and  they  stand  there  as  a  solid  and 
impregnable  bulwark  against  all  the  evils  of  life. 

Friendships  should  be  formed  with  persons  of  all  ages  and 
conditions,  and  with  both  sexes.  I  have  a  friend  who  is  a  book- 
seller, to  whom  I  have  been  very  civil,  and  who  would  do  anything 
to  serve  me  ;  and  I  have  two  or  thi'ee  small  friendships  among  per- 
sons in  much  humbler  walks  of  life,  who,  I  verily  believe,  would  do 
me  a  considerable  kindness  according  to  their  means.  It  is  a  great 
happiness  to  form  a  sincere  friendship  with  a  woman  ;  but  a  friend- 
ship among  persons  of  different  sexes  rarely  or  ever  takes  place 


282  GOOD  SPIRITS. 

in  this  country.  The  austerity  of  our  manners  hardly  admits  of 
such  a  connection  —  compatible  with  the  most  perfect  innocence, 
and  a  source  of  the  highest  possible  delight  to  those  who  are  for- 
tunate enough  to  form  it. 

Very  few  friends  will  bear  to  be  told  of  their  faults ;  and  if 
done  at  all,  it  must  be  done  with  irrfinite  management  and  delicacy ; 
for  if  you  indulge  often  in  this  practice,  men  think  you  hate,  and 
avoid  you.  If  the  evil  is  not  very  alarming,  it  is  better,  indeed, 
to  let  it  alone,  and  not  to  turn  friendship  into  a  system  of  lawful 
and  unpunishable  impertinence.  I  am  for  frank  explanations  with 
friends  in  cases  of  affronts.  They  sometimes  save  a  pei'ishing 
friendship,  and  even  place  it  on  a  firmer  basis  than  at  first ;  but 
secret  discontent  must  always  end  badly. 


OF  cheerfulness- 
Cheerfulness  and  good  spirits  depend,  in  a  great  degree,  upon 
bodily  causes,  but  much  may  be  done  for  the  promotion  of  this 
turn  of  mind.  Persons  subject  to  low  spirits  should  make  the 
rooms  in  which  they  live  as  cheerful  as  possible ;  taking  care  that 
the  paper  with  which  the  wall  is  covered  should  be  of  a  brilliant, 
lively  colour,  hanging  up  pictures  or  pi-ints,  and  covering  the 
chimney-piece  with  beautiful  china.  A  bay-window  looking  upon 
pleasant  objects,  and,  above  all,  a  large  fire  whenever  the  weather 
will  permit,  are  favourable  to  good  spirits,  and  the  tables  near 
should  be  strewed  with  books  and  pamphlets.  To  this  must  be 
added  as  much  eating  and  drinking  as  is  consistent  with  health ; 
and  some  manual  employment  for  men — as  gardening,  a  carpen- 
ter's shop,  the  turning-lathe,  etc.  Women  have  always  manual 
employment  enough,  and  it  is  a  great  source  of  cheerfulness. 
Fresh  air,  exercise,  occupation,  society,  and  travelling,  are  powerful 
remedies. 

Melancholy  commonly  flies  to  the  future  for  its  aliment,  and 
must  be  encountered  in  this  sort  of  artifice,  by  diminishing  the 
range  of  our  views.  I  have  a  large  family  coming  on,  my  income 
is  diminishing,  and  I  shall  fall  into  pecuniary  diflicnlties.  Well ! 
but  you  are  not  now  in  pecuniary  difiiculties.  Your  eldest  child 
is  only  seven  years  old ;  it  must  be  two  or  three  years  before  your 
family  make  any  additional  demands  upon  your  purse.     Wait  till 


FALLACIES.  283 

he  time  comes.  Mich  may  happen  in  the  interval  to  better  your 
situation ;  and  if  nothing  does  happen,  at  least  enjoy  the  two  or 

hree  years  of  ease  and  uninterruption  which  are  before  you. 
You  are  uneasy  about  your  eldest  son  in  India ;  but  it  is  now 
June,  and,  at  the  earliest,  the  fleet  will  not  come  in  till  September ; 
it  may  bring  accounts  of  his  health  and  prosperity,  but  at  all 
events  there  are  eight  or  nine  weeks  before  you  can  hear  news. 
"Why  are  they  to  be  spent  as  if  you  had  heard  the  worst  ?  The 
habit  of  taking  very  short  views  of  human  life  may  be  acquired 
by  degrees,  and  a  great  sum  of  happiness  is  gained  by  it.  It 
becomes  as  customary  at  last  to  view  things  on  the  good  side  of  the 
question  as  it  was  before  to  despond,  and  to  extract  misery  from 
every  passing  event. 

A  firm  confidence  in  an  overruling  Providence — a  remem- 
brance of  the  shortness  of  human  life,  that  it  will  soon  be  over 
and  finished  —  that  we  scarcely  know,  unless  we  could  trace  the 
remote  consequences  of  every  event,  what  would  be  good  and 
what  an  evil ;  these  are  very  important  topics  in  that  melancholy 
which  proceeds  from  grief. 

It  is  wise  to  state  to  friends  that  our  spirits  are  low,  to  state  the 
cause  of  the  depression,  and  to  hear  all  that  argument  or  ridicule 
can  suggest  for  the  cure.  Melancholy  is  always  the  worse  for 
concealment,  and  many  causes  of  depression  are  so  frivolous,  that 
we  are  shamed  out  of  them  by  the  mere  statement  of  their  existence. 


FALLACIES.* 

Fallacy  I. — "  Because  I  have  gone  through  it,  my  son  shall  go 
through  it  also." 

A  MAN  gets  well  pommelled  at  a  pubhc  school ;  is  subject  to 
every  misery  and  every  indignity  which  seventeen  years  of  age  can 
inflict  upon  nine  and  ten  ;  has  his  eye  nearly  knocked  out,  and  his 
clothes  stolen  and  cut  to  pieces  ;  and  twenty  years  afterward,  when 
he  is  a  chrysalis,  and  has  forgotten  the  miseries  of  his  grub  state, 

*  Lady  Holland  introduces  the  "Fallacies  "  in  her  Memoir  with  the  remark 
of  Sydney  Smith :  "  It  is  astonishing  the  influence  foolish  apothegms  have 
upon  the-mass  of  mankind,  though  they  are  not  unfrequently  fallacies.  Here 
are  a  few  I  amused  myself  with  writing  long  before  Bentham's  book  on  Fal- 
acies  " 


284  INFLICTIONS   ON   YOUTH. 

is  determined  to  act  a  manly  part  in  life,  and  says,  "I  passed 
through  all  that  myself,  and  I  am  determined  my  son  shall  pass 
through  it  as  I  have  done  ;"  and  away  goes  his  bleating  progeny 
to  the  tyranny  and  servitude  of  the  long  chamber  or  the  large 
dormitory.  It  would  surely  be  much  more  rational  to  say,  "  Be- 
cause I  have  passed  through  it,  I  am  determined  my  son  shall 
not  pass  through  it ;  because  I  was  kicked  for  nothing,  and  cuffed 
for  nothing,  and  fagged  for  everything,  I  will  spare  all  these 
miseries  to  my  child."  It  is  not  for  any  good  which  may  be  de- 
rived from  this  rough  usage ;  that  has  not  been  weighed  and 
considered  ;  few  persons  are  capable  of  weighing  its  effects  upon 
character  ;  but  there  is  a  sort  of  compensatory  and  consolatory  no- 
tion, that  the  present  generation  (whether  useful  or  not,  no  matter) 
are  not  to  come  off"  scot-free,  but  are  to  have  their  share  of  ill- 
usage  ;  as  if  the  black  eye  and  bloody  nose  which  Master  John 
Jackson  received  in  1800,  are  less  black  and  bloody  by  the  appli- 
cation of  similar  violence  to  similar  parts  of  Master  Thomas  Jack- 
son, the  son,  in  1830.  This  is  not  only  sad  nonsense,  but  cruel 
nonsense.  The  only  use  to  be  derived  from  the  recollection  of 
what  we  have  suffered  in  youth,  is  a  fixed  determination  to  screen 
those  we  educate  from  every  evil  and  inconvenience,  from  sub- 
jection to  which  there  are  not  cogent  reasons  for  submitting.  Can 
anything  be  more  stupid  and  pre2)osterous  than  this  concealed  re- 
venge upon  the  rising  generation,  and  latent  envy  lest  they  should 
avail  themselves  of  the  improvements  time  has  made,  and  pass  a 
happier  youth  than  their  fathers  have  done  ? 

Fallacy  11. — "/  have  said  I  will  do  it,  and  I  will  do  it ;  I  will 
stick  to  my  word." 

This  fallacy  proceeds  from  confounding  resolutions  with  prom- 
ises. If  you  have  promised  to  give  a  man  a  guinea  for  a  reward, 
or  to  sell  him  a  horse  or  a  field,  you  must  do  it ;  you  are  dishonest 
if  you  do  not.  But  if  you  have  made  a  resolution  to  eat  no  meat 
for  a  year,  and  everybody  about  you  sees  that  you  are  doing  mis- 
chief to  your  constitution,  is  it  any  answer  to  say,  you  have  said 
so,  and  you  will  stick  to  your  word  ?  With  whom  have  you  made 
the  contract  but  with  yourself?  and  if  you  and  yourself,  the  two 
contracting  parties,  agree  to  break  the  contract,  where  is  the  evii, 
or  who  is  injured? 


HALF-MEASURES.  285 

Fallacy  III. — '■'■  I  object  to  half-measures — it  is  neither  one  tiling 
nor  the  other." 

But  wliy  should  it  be  either  one  thing  or  the  other  ?  why  not 
something  betAveen  both  ?  Why  are  half-measures  necessai'ily  or 
probably  unwise  measures  ?  I  am  embarrassed  in  my  circum- 
stances ;  one  of  my  plans  is,  to  persevere  boldly  in  the  same  line 
of  expense,  and  to  trust  to  the  chapter  of  accidents  for  some  in- 
crease of  fortune ;  the  other  is,  to  retire  entirely  from  the  world, 
and  to  hide  myself  in  a  cottage ;  but  I  end  with  doing  neither,  and 
take  a  middle  course  of  diminished  expenditure.  I  do  neither  one 
thing  nor  the  other,  but  possibly  act  wiser  than  if  I  had  done 
either.  I  am  highly  offended  by  the  conduct  of  an  acquaintance ; 
I  neither  overlook  it  entirely  nor  do  I  proceed  to  call  him  out ;  I 
do  neither,  but  show  him,  by  a  serious  change  of  manner,  that  I 
consider  myself  to  have  been  ill-treated.  I  effect  my  object  by 
half-measures.  I  cannot  agree  entirely  with  the  Opposition  or  the 
Ministry ;  it  may  very  easily  happen  that  my  half-measures  are 
wiser  than  the  extremes  to  which  they  are  opposed.  But  it  is  a  ■ 
sort  of  metaphor  which  debauches  the  understanding  of  foolish 
people ;  and  when  half-measures  are  mentioned,  they  have  much 
the  same  feeling  as  if  they  were  cheated  —  as  if  they  had  bargained 
for  a  whole  bushel  and  received  but  half.  To  act  in  extremes  is 
sometimes  wisdom ;  to  avoid  them  is  sometimes  wisdom ;  every 
measure  must  be  judged  of  by  its  own  particular  circumstances. 


A   NICE    PERSON.* 

A  NICE  person  is  neither  too  tall  nor  too  short,  looks  clean  and 
cheerful,  has  no  prominent  feature,  makes  no  difficulties,  is  never 
misplaced,  sits  bodkin,  is  never  foolishly  affronted,  and  is  void  of 
affectations. 

*  Lady  Holland  gives  the  following  account  of  this  little  sketch  : — "  In  the 
course  of  the  summer  [1823]  a  young  friend  came  to  spend  a  month  Avith  us, 
at  Foston,  the  freshness  and  originality  of  whose  character  both  interested 
and  amused  my  father;  he  chanced  on  one  occasion  to  call  her  'a  nice  per- 
son.' '  Oh,  don't  call  me  "  nice,"  Mr.  Sydney ;  people  only  say  that  where 
they  can  say  nothing  else.'  '  Why  ?  have  you  ever  reflected  what  "  a  nice 
person"  means  ?'  'No,  Mr.  Sydney,' said  she,  laughing,  'but  I  don't  like 
it.'  '  "Well,  give  me  pen  and  ink  ;  I  ivill  show  you,'  said  my  father,  '  a  defi- 
nition of  a  nice  person.'  " 


286  NICETY   AND   HARDNESS. 

A  nice  jDerson  helps  you  well  at  dinner,  understands  you,  is  al 
ways  gratefully  received  by  young  and  old,  whig  and  tory,  grave 
and  gay. 

There  is  something  in  the  very  air  of  a  nice  person  which  in- 
spires you  with  confidence,  makes  you  talk,  and  talk  without  fear 
of  mahcious  misrepresentation ;  you  feel  that  you  are  reposing 
upon  a  nature  which  God  has  made  kind,  and  created  for  the  ben- 
efit and  happiness  of  society.  It  has  the  effect  upon  the  mmd 
which  soft  air  and  a  fine  climate  have  upon  the  body. 

A  nice  person  is  clear  of  little,  trumpery  passions,  acknowledges 
superiority,  delights  in  talent,  shelters  humility,  pardons  adversity, 
forgives  deficiency,  respects  all  men's  rights,  never  stops  the  bot- 
tle, is  never  long  and  never  wrong,  always  knows  the  day  of  the 
month,  the  name  of  everybody  at  table,  and  never  gives  pain  to 
any  human  being. 

If  anybody  is  wanted  for  a  party,  a  nice  person  is  the  first 
thought  of;  when  the  child  is  christened,  when  the  daughter  is 
married  —  all  the  joys  of  life  are  communicated  to  nice  people ;  the 
hand  of  the  dying  man  is  always  held  out  to  a  nice  person. 

A  nice  person  never  knocks  over  wine  or  melted  butter,  does 
not  tread  upon  the  dog's  foot,  or  molest  the  family  cat,  eats  soup 
without  noise,  laughs  in  the  right  place,  and  has  a  watchful  and 
attentive  eye. 


DEFINITION    OF   HARDNESS    OF    CHARACTER.* 

Hardness  is  a  want  of  minute  attention  to  the  feelings  of 
others.  It  does  not  proceed  from  malignity  or  a  carelessness  of 
inflicting  pain,  but  from  a  want  of  delicate  perception  of  those 
little  things  by  which  pleasure  is  conferred  or  pain  excited. 

A  hard  person  thinks  he  has  done  enough  if  he  does  not  speak 
ill  of  your  relations,  your  children,  or  your  country ;  and  then, 
with  the  greatest  good-humour  and  volubility,  and  with  a  total  in- 
attention to  your  individual  state  and  position,  gallops  over  a 

*  This  was  written  in  1843,  when,  in  the  month  of  July,  "he  spent  a  few 
days  at  Nuneham,  on  a  visit  to  his  former  diocesan,  the  Archbishop  of  York. 
He  met  there  a  large  and  agreeable  party;  and  a  discussion  arising  on 
hardness  of  character,  my  father,  at  the  request  of  Miss  Georgiana  Harconrt 
wrote  this  definition  of  it." — Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  262. 


A   PARISH   TRACT.  287 

tliousand  fine  feelings,  and  leaves  in  every  step  the  mark  of  his 
hoofs  upon  your  heart.  Analyze  the  conversation  of  a  well-bred 
man  v/ho  is  clear  of  the  besetting  sin  of  hardness ;  it  is  a  perpetual 
homage  of  polite  good-nature.  He  remembers  that  you  are  con- 
nected with  the  Church,  and  he  avoids  (whatever  his  opinions 
may  be)  the  most  distant  reflections  on  the  EstabHshment.  He 
knows  that  you  are  admired,  and  he  admires  you  as  far  as  is  com- 
patible with  good-breeding.  He  sees  that,  though  young,  you  are 
at  the  head  of  a  great  establishment,  and  he  infuses  into  his  man- 
ner and  conversation  that  respect  which  is  so  pleasing  to  all  who 
exercise  authority.  He  leaves  you  in  perfect  good-humour  with 
yourself,  because  you  perceive  how  much  and  how  successfully 
you  have  been  studied. 

In  the  meantime,  the  gentleman  on  the  other  side  of  you  (a 
highly  moral  and  respectable  man)  has  been  crushing  little  sensi- 
bilities, and  violating  little  proprieties,  and  overlooking  little  dis- 
criminations ;  and,  without  violating  anything  which  can  be  called 
a  rule,  or  committing  what  can  be  denominated  a  fault,  has  dis- 
pleased and  dispirited  you,  from  Avanting  that  fine  vision  which 
sees  little  things,  and  that  delicate  touch  which  handles  them,  and 
that  fine  sympathy  which  this  superior  moral  organization  always 
bestows. 

So  great  an  evil  in  society  is  hardness,  and  that  want  of  per- 
ception of  the  minute  circumstances  which  occasion  pleasure  or 
pain! 


ADVICE    TO    PARISHIONERS.* 

If  you  begin  stealing  a  little,  you  will  go  on  from  little  to  much, 
and  soon  become  a  regular  thief;  and  then  you  will  be  hanged, 
or  sent  over  seas  to  Botany  Bay.  And  give  me  leave  to  tell  you, 
transportation  is  no  joke.     Up  at  five  in  the  morning,  dressed  in 

*  Lady  Holland,  in  her  sketches  of  "Life  and  Conversation  at  Combe 
Florey,"  introduces  this  with  the  following  prefatory  explanation  by  Sydney 
Smith  himself:  "  It  is  lamentable  to  see  how  ignorant  the  poor  are.  I  do  not 
mean  of  reading  and  writing,  but  about  the  common  affairs  of  life.  They  are 
as  helpless  as.^'hildrcn  in  all  difficulties.  Nothing  would  be  so  useful  as  some 
short  and  cheap  book,  to  instruct  them  what  to  do,  to  whom  to  go,  and  to 
give  them  a  little  advice ;  I  mean  mere  practical  advice.  I  have  begun  some- 
thing of  this  sort  for  my  parishioners ;  here  it  is." 


288  WET  CLOTHES. 

a  jacket  half  blue  half  yellow,  chained  on  to  another  person  I'ike 
two  dogs,  a  man  standing  over  you  with  a  great  stick,  weak  por- 
ridge for  breakfast,  bread  and  water  for  dmner,  boiled  beans  for 
supper,  straw  to  lie  upon  ;  and  all  this  for  thirty  years  ;  and  then 
you  are  hanged  there  by  order  of  the  governor,  without  judge  or 
jury.  All  this  is  very  disagreeable,  and  you  had  far  better  avoid 
it  by  making  a  solemn  resolution  to  take  nothing  which  does  not 
belong  to  you. 

Never  sit  in  wet  clothes.  Off  with  them  as  soon  as  you  can : 
no  constitution  can  stand  it.  Look  at  Jackson,  who  lives  next 
door  to  the  blacksmith ;  he  was  the  strongest  man  in  the  pai-ish. 
Twenty  different  times  I  warned  him  of  his  folly  in  wearing  wet 
clothes.  He  pulled  off  his  hat  and  smiled,  and  was  very  civil,  but 
clearly  seemed  to  think  it  all  old  woman's  nonsense.  He  is  now, 
as  you  see,  bent  double  with  rheumatism,  is  living  upon  parish 
allowance,  and  scarcely  able  to  crawl  from  pillar  to  post. 

Off  with  your  hat  when  you  meet  a  gentleman.  What  does  it 
cost?  Gentlemen  notice  these  things,  are  offended  if  the  civility 
is  not  paid,  and  pleased  if  it  is ;  and  what  harm  does  it  do  you  ? 
When  first  I  came  to  this  parish.  Squire  Tempest  wanted  a  postil- 
ion. John  Barton  was  a  good,  civil  fellow ;  and  in  thinking  over 
the  names  of  the  village,  the  Squire  thought  of  Barton,  remem- 
bered his  constant  civility,  sent  for  one  of  his  sons,  made  him 
postilion,  then  coachman,  then  bailiff,  and  he  now  holds  a  farm 
under  the  Squire  of  £500  per  annum.  Such  things  are  constantly 
happening. 

I  will  have  no  swearing.  There  is  pleasure  in  a  pint  of  ale, 
but  what  pleasure  is  there  in  an  oath  ?  A  swearer  is  a  low,  vul- 
gar person.  Swearing  is  fit  for  a  tinker  or  a  razor-grinder,  not 
for  an  honest  labourer  in  my  parish. 

I  must  positively  forbid  all  poaching;  it  is  absolute  ruin  to 
yourself  and  your  family.  In  the  end  you  are  sure  to  be  detected 
— a  hare  in  one  pocket  and  a  pheasant  in  the  other.  How  are 
you  to  pay  ten  pounds  ?  You  have  not  tenpence  beforehand  in 
the  world.  Daniel's  breeches  are  unpaid  for ;  you  have  a  hole  in 
your  hat,  and  want  a  new  one ;  your  wife,  an  excellent  woman,  is 
about  to  lie  in — and  you  are,  all  of  a  sudden,  called  upon  by  the 
justice  to  pay  ten  pounds.  I  shall  never  forget  the  sight  of  poor 
Cranford,  hurried  to  Taunton  jail ;  a  wife  and  three  daughters  on 


DRUNKENNESS.  289 

their  knees  to  the  justice,  who  was  compelled  to  do  his  duty,  and 
commit  him.  The  next  day,  beds,  chairs,  and  clothes,  sold,  to  get 
the  father  out  of  jail.  Out  of  jail  he  came  ;  but  the  poor  fellow 
could  not  bear  the  sight  of  his  naked  cottage,  and  to  see  liis  family 
•pinched  with  hunger.  You  know  how  he  ended  his  days.  "W'jis 
there  a  dry  eye  in  the  churchyard  when  he  was  buried  ?  It  was 
a  lesson  to  poachers.  It  is  indeed  a  desperate  and  foolish  trade. 
Observe,  I  am  not  defending  the  game-laws,  but  I  am  advising 
you,  as  long  as  the  game-laws  exist,  to  fear  them,  and  to  take  care 
that  you  and  your  family  are  not  crushed  by  them.  And  then, 
smart,  stout  young  men  hate  the  gamekeeper,  and  make  it  a  point 
of  courage  and  spirit  to  oppose  him.  Why?  The  gamekeeper 
is  paid  to  protect  the  game,  and  he  would  be  a  very  dishonest  man 
if  he  did  not  do  his  duty.  What  right  have  you  to  bear  malice 
against  him  for  this  ?  After  all,  the  game  in  justice  belongs  to  the 
land-owners,  who  feed  it ;  and  not  to  you,  who  have  no  land  at 
all,  and  can  feed  nothing. 

I  don't  like  that  red  nose,  and  those  blear  eyes,  and  that  stupid, 
downcast  look.  You  are  a  drunkard.  Another  pint,  and  one 
pint  more ;  a  glass  of  gin  and  water,  rum  and  milk,  cider  and 
pepper,  a  glass  of  peppermint,  and  all  the  beastly  fluids  which 
drunkards  pour  down  their  throats.  It  is  very  possible  to  conquer 
it,  if  you  will  but  be  resolute.  I  remember  a  man  in  Staffordshire 
who  was  drunk  every  day  of  his  life.  Every  farthing  he  earned 
went  to  the  ale-house.  One  evening  he  staggered  home,  and  found 
at  a  late  hour  his  wife  sitting  alone,  and  drowned  in  tears.  He 
was  a  man  not  deficient  in  natural  affections ;  he  appeared  to  be 
struck  with  the  wretchedness  of  the  woman,  and  with  some  eager- 
ness asked  her  why  she  was  crying.  "  I  don't  like  to  tell  you, 
James,"  she  said,  "  but  if  I  must,  I  must ;  and  truth  is,  my  children 
have  not  touched  a  morsel  of  anything  this  blessed  day.  As  for 
me,  never  mind  me ;  I  must  leave  you  to  guess  how  it  has  fared 
with  me.  But  not  one  morsel  of  food  could  I  beg  or  buy  for  those 
children  that  lie  on  that  bed  before  you  ;  and  I  am  sure,  James,  it 
is  better  for  us  all  we  should  die,  and  to  my  soul  I  wish  we  were 
dead."  "  Dead  !"  said  James,  stai'ting  up  as  if  a  flash  of  lightning 
had  daii;ed  upon  him ;  "  dead,  Sally  !  You  and  Mary  and  the  two 
young  ones  dead  ?  Look  ye,  my  lass,  you  see  what  I  am  now  — 
like  a  brute.     I  have  wasted  your  substance  —  the  curse  of  God 

13 


2'J(J  SEDUCTION. 

is  upon  me  —  I  am  drawing  near  to  the  pit  of  destruction  —  but 
there's  an  end ;  I  feel  there's  an  end.  Give  me  tnat  glass,  wife." 
She  gave  it  him  with  astonishment  aild  feai'.  He  turned  it  topsy- 
turvy ;  and,  striking  the  table  with  great  violence,  and  flinging  him- 
self on  his  knees,  made  a  most  solemn  and  affecting  vow  to  God 
of  repentance  and  sobriety.  From  that  moment  to  the  day  of 
his  death  he  drank  no  fermented  liquor,  but  confined  himself 
entirely  to  tea  and  water.*  I  never  saw  so  sudden  and  astonish- 
mg  a  change.  His  looks  became  healthy,  his  cottage  neat,  his 
children  were  clad,  his  Avife  was  happy  ;  and  twenty  times  the  poor 
man  and  his  wife,  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  have  told  me  the  stoiy, 
and  blessed  the  evening  of  the  fourteenth  of  March,  the  day  of 
James's  restoration,  and  have  shown  me  the  glass  he  held  in  his 
hand  when  he  made  the  vow  of  sobriety.  It  is  all  nonsense  about 
not  being  able  to  work  without  ale,  and  gin,  and  cider,  and  fer- 
mented liquors.  Do  hons  and  cart-horses  drink  ale  ?  It  is  mere 
habit.  If  you  have  good  nourishing  food,  you  can  do  very  well 
without  ale.  Nobody  works  harder  than  the  Yorkshire  people,  and 
for  years  together  there  are  many  Yorkshire  labourers  who  never 
taste  ale.  I  have  no  objection,  you  will  observe,  to  a  moderate 
use  of  ale,  or  any  other  liquor  you  can  afford  to  purchase.  My 
objection  is,  that  you  cannot  afford  it ;  that  every  penny  you  spend 
at  the  ale-house  comes  out  of  the  stomachs  of  the  poor  children, 
and  strips  off  the  clothes  of  the  wife. 

My  dear  little  Nanny,  don't  believe  a  word  he  says.  He  merely 
means  to  ruin  and  deceive  you.  You  have  a  plain  answer  to  give : 
*'T\nien  I  am  axed  in  the  church,  and  the  parson  has  read  the 
service,  and  all  about  it  is  written  down  in  the  book,  then  I  will 
listen  to  your  nonsense,  and  not  before."  Am  not  I  a  Justice  of 
the  Peace  ?  and  have  not  I  had  a  hundred  fooUsh  girls  brought 
before  me,  who  have  all  come  with  the  same  story  ?  "  Please, 
your  worship,  he  is  a  false  man ;  he  promised  me  mari'iage  over 
and  over  again."  I  confess  I  have  often  wished  for  the  power  of 
hanging  these  rural  lovers.  But  what  use  is  my  wishing?  All 
that  can  be  done  with  the  villain  is  to  make  him  pay  half  a  crown 
a  week,  and  you  are  handed  over  to  the  poor-house,  and  to  infamy. 
Will  no  example  teach  you?  Look  to  Mary  Willet — three  years 
ago  the  handsomest  and  best  girl  in  the  village,  now  a  slattern  in 
*  A  fact.  —  Author's  Note. 


MR.   SWING.  291 

the  poor-house !  Look  at  Harriet  Dobson,  who  trusted  in  the 
promises  of  James  Harefield's  son,  and,  after  being  abandoned  by 
laim,  went  away  in  despair  with  a  party  of  sokliers.  How  can 
you  be  such  a  fool  as  to  surrender  your  character  to  the  stupid 
flattery  of  a  ploughboy  ?  If  the  evening  is  pleasant,  and  birds  sing, 
and  flowers  bloom,  is  that  any  reason  why  you  are  to  forget  God's 
Word,  the  happiness  of  your  family,  and  your  own  character? 
What  is  a  woman  worth  without  character  ?  A  profligate  carpen- 
ter or  a  debauched  watchmaker  may  gain  business  from  his  skill ; 
but  how  is  a  profligate  woman  to  gain  her  bread  ?  Who  will 
receive  he7-? 

But  this  is  enough  of  my  parish  advice. 


LETTER    TO    MR.    SWING.* 

The  wool  your  coat  is  made  of  is  spun  by  machinery,  and 
this  machinery  makes  your  coat  two  or  three  shillings  cheaper — 
perhaps  six  or  seven.  Your  white  hat  is  made  by  machinery 
at  half  price.  The  coals  you  burn  are  pulled  out  of  the  pit  by 
machinery,  and  are  sold  to  you  much  cheaper  than  they  could  be 
if  they  were  pulled  out  by  hand.  You  do  not  complain  of  these 
machines,  because  they  d,  you  good,  though  they  throw  many 
artisans  out  of  work.  But  what  right  have  you  to  object  to 
fannmg  machines,  which  make  bi'ead  cheaper  to  the  artisans, 
and  to  avail  yourselves  of  other  machines  which  make  manufac- 
tures cheaper  to  you  ? 

If  all  machinery  were  abolished,  everything  would  be  so  dear 
that  you  would  be  ten  times  worse  oiF  than  you  now  are.  Poor 
people's  cloth  would  get  up  to  a  guinea  a  yard.  Hats  could  not 
be  sold  for  less  than  eighteen  shillings.  Coals  would  be  three 
shillings  per  hundred.  It  would  be  quite  impossible  for  a  poor 
man  to  obtain  any  comfort. 

If  you  begin  to  object  to  machinery  in  farming,  you  may  as  well 

*  Lady  Holland,  in  Memoir,  p.  212,  says  :  "  There  were  at  this  time  so  many 
mischievous  publications  circulating  among  the  people,  and  threatening  letters 
so  frequently  sent  to  my  father  and  other  gentlemen  in  the  neighbourhood, 
that  he  thought  it  right  to  endeavour  to  counteract  them,  and  published  some 
cheap  letters  for  circulation  among  the  poor,  called  '  Letters  to  Swing,'  of 
which  this  from  the  'Taunton  Courier'  of  Wednesday,  Dec.  8th,  1830,  has 
been  accidentally  preserved." 


292  MAXIMS. 

object  to  a  plough,  because  it  employs  fewer  men  than  a  spade. 
You  may  object  to  a  harrow,  because  it  employs  fewer  men  than 
a  rake.  You  may  object  even  to  a  spade,  because  it  employs 
fewer  men  than  fingers  and  sticks,  with  which  savages  scratch  the 
ground  in  Otaheite.  If  you  expect  manufacturers  to  turn  against 
machinery,  look  at  the  consequence.  They  may  succeed,  perhaps, 
in  driving  machinery  out  of  the  town  they  live  in,  but  they  often 
drive  the  manufacturer  out  of  the  town  also.  lie  sets  up  his 
trade  in  some  distant  part  of  the  country,  gets  new  men,  and  the 
disciples  of  Swing  are  left  to  starve  in  the  scene  of  their  violence 
and  folly.  In  this  way  the  lace  manufacture  travelled  in  the 
time  of  Ludd,  Swing's  grandfather,  from  Nottingham  to  Tiverton. 
Suppose  a  free  importation  of  corn  to  be  allowed,  as  it  ought  to  be, 
and  will  be.  If  you  will  not  allow  farmers  to  grow  corn  here  as 
cheap  as  they  can,  more  corn  will  come  from  America ;  for  every 
thrashing-machine  that  is  destroyed,  more  Americans  will  be 
employed,  not  more  Englishmen. 

Swing !  Swing !  you  are  a  stout  fellow,  but  you  are  a  bad 
adviser.  The  law  is  up,  and  the  Judge  is  coming.  Fifty  persons 
in  Kent  are  already  transported,  and  will  see  their  wives  and 
children  no  more.  Sixty  persons  will  be  hanged  in  Hampshire. 
There  are  two  hundred  for  trial  in  Wiltshire  —  all  scholars  of 
Swing !  I  am  no  farmer :  I  have  not  a  machine  bigger  than  a  pep- 
permill.  I  am  a  sincere  friend  to  the  poor,  and  I  think  every  man 
should  live  by  his  labour :  but  it  cuts  me  to  the  very  heart  to  see 
honest  husbandmen  perishing  by  that  worst  of  all  machines,  the 
gallows — under  the  guidance  of  that  most  fatal  of  all  leaders  — 
Swinsc !" 


MAXIMS    AND    RULES    OF    LIFE.* 

Remember  that  every  person,  however  low,  has  rights  and 
feelings.  In  all  contentions,  let  peace  be  rather  your  object,  than 
triumph :  value  triumph  only  as  the  means  of  peace. 

*  "  These  are  extracts  from  such  few  portions  of  his  diary  as  have  been 
pi-eserved,  written  at  various  times.  These  slight,  unfinished  fragments  are 
not,  of  course,  given  as  specimens  of  composition ;  but  they  are,  I  think,  of 
great  value,  as  indicating  the  occupation  and  direction  of  his  thoughts,  and 
the  wholesome  training  of  his  mind,  in  his  leisure  hours,  and  in  solitude,  of 


DIARY  293 

Remember  that  your  children,  your  Avife,  and  your  servants, 
have  rights  and  feeHngs ;  treat  them  as  you  Avould  treat  persons 
who  could  turn  again.  Apply  these  doctrines  to  the  administration 
of  justice  as  a  magistrate.  Rank  poisons  make  good  medicines  ; 
error  and  misfortune  may  be  turned  into  wisdom  and  improve- 
ment. 

Do  not  attempt  to  frighten  children  and  inferiors  by  passion ;  it 
does  more  harm  to  your  own  character  than  it  does  good  to  them ; 
the  same  thing  is  better  done  by  firmness  and  persuasion. 

If  you  desire  the  common  people  to  treat  you  as  a  gentleman, 
you  must  conduct  yourself  as  a  gentleman  should  do  to  them. 

Wlien  you  meet  with  neglect,  let  it  rouse  you  to  exertion,  in- 
stead of  mortifying  your  pride.  Set  about  lessening  those  defects 
which  expose  you  to  neglect,  and  improve  those  excellences  which 
command  attention  and  respect. 

Against  general  fears,  remember  how  very  precarious  life  is, 
take  what  care  you  will ;  how  short  it  is,  last  as  long  as  it  evei 
does. 

Rise  early  in  the  morning,  not  only  to  avoid  self-reproach,  but 
to  make  the  most  of  the  little  life  that  remains ;  not  only  to  save 
the  hours  lost  in  sleep,  but  to  avoid  that  languor  which  is  spread 
over  mind  and  body  for  the  whole  of  that  day  in  which  you  have 
lain  late  in  bed. 

Passion  gets  less  and  less  powerful  after  every  defeat.  Hus- 
band energy  for  the  real  demand  which  the  dangers  of  hfe  make 
upon  it. 

Find  fault,  when  you  must  find  fault,  in  private,  if  possible; 
and  some  time  after  the  ofience,  rather  than  at  the  time.  The 
blamed  are  less  inclined  to  resist,  when  they  are  blamed  without 
witnesses  ;  both  parties  are  calmer,  and  the  accused  party  is  struck 
with  the  forbearance  of  the  accuser,  who  has  seen  the  fault,  and 
watched  for  a  private  and  proper  time  for  mentioning  it. 

My  son  writes  me  word  he  is  unhappy  at  school.     This  makes 

which  he  seems  to  have  felt  the  full  value  for  the  improvement  of  his  char- 
acter. In  one  of  his  letters  to  Jeffrey  about  this  period,  he  says  :  '  Living  a 
great  deal  alone  (as  I  now  do)  will,  I  believe,  correct  me  of  my  faults,  for  a 
man  can  do  without  his  own  approbation  in  much  society,  but  he  must  make 
great  exertions  to  gain  it  when  he  is  alone ;  without  it,  I  am  convinced,  soli 
tude  is  not  to  be  endured.'" — Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  113. 


294  REFLECTIONS. 

me  unhappy;  but,  1st.  There  is  much  unhappiness  in  human  life: 
how  can  school  be  exempt  ?  2dly.  Boys  are  apt  to  take  a  particular 
moment  of  depression  for  a  general  feeling,  and  they  are  in  fact 
rarely  unhappy ;  at  the  moment  I  write,  perhaps  he  is  playing 
about  in  the  highest  spirits.  3dly.  "When  he  comes  to  state  his 
grievance,  it  will  probably  have  vanished,  or  be  so  trifling,  that  it 
will  yield  to  argument  or  expostulation.  4thly.  At  all  events,  if 
it  is  a  real  evil  Avhich  makes  him  unhappy,  I  must  find  out  what  it 
is,  and  proceed  to  act  upon  it ;  but  I  must  wait  tiU  I  can,  either  in 
person  or  by  letter,  find  out  what  it  is. 

Not  only  is  religion  calm  and  tranquil,  but  it  has  an  extensive 
atmosphere  round  it,  whose  calmness  and  tranquillity  must  be  pre- 
served, if  you  would  avoid  misrepresentation. 

Not  only  study  that  those  with  whom  you  live  should  habitually 
respect  you,  but  cultivate  such  manners  as  will  se^'ure  the  respect 
of  persons  with  whom  you  occasionally  converse.  Keep  up  the 
habit  of  being  respected,  and  do  not  attempt  to  be  more  amusing 
and  agreeable  than  is  consistent  with  the  preservation  of- respect. 

I  am  come  to  the  age  of  seventy ;  have  attained  enough  reputa- 
tion to  make  me  somebody :  I  should  not  like  a  vast  reputation,  it 
would  plague  me  to  death.  I  hope  to  care  less  for  the  outward 
world. 

Hope. 

Don't  be  too  severe  upon  yourself  and  your  own  failings ;  keep 
on,  don't  faint,  be  energetic  to  the  last. 

If  you  wish  to  keep  mind  clear  and  body  healthy,  abstain  from 
all  fermented  liquors. 

Fight  against  sloth,  and  do  all  you  can  to  make  friends. 

If  old  age  is  even  a  state  of  sufiering,  it  is  a  state  of  superior 
wisdom,  in  which  man  avoids  all  the  rash  and  foolish  things  he 
does  in  his  youth,  and  which  make  life  dangerous  and  painful. 

Death  must  be  distinguished  from  dying,  with  which  it  is  often 
confounded. 

Reverence  and  stand  in  awe  of  yourself. 

How  Nature  delights  and  amuses  us  by  varying  even  the  char- 
acter of  insects  ;  the  ill-nature  of  the  wasp,  the  sluggishness  of  the 
drone,  the  volatility  of  the  butterfly,  the  slyness  of  the  bug. 

Take  short  views,  hops  :or  the  best,  and  trust  in  God. 


PROGRESS   OF  SOCIETY.  295 

MODERN    CHANGES.* 

"  The  good  of  ancient  times  let  others  state, 
I  think  it  lucky  I  was  bom  so  late." 

Mr.  Editor  :  It  is  of  some  importance  at  what  period  a  man 
is  born.  A  young  man,  alive  at  this  period,  hardly  knows  to  what 
improvements  of  human  life  he  has  been  introduced  :  and  I  would 
bring  before  his  notice  the  following  eighteen  changes  which  have 
taken  place  in  England,  since  I  first  began  to  breathe  in  it  the 
breath  of  life — a  period  amounting  now  to  nearly  seventy-three 
years. 

Gas  was  unknown :  1  groped  about  the  streets  of  London  in  all 
but  the  utter  darkness  or  a  twinkling  oil  lamp,  under  the  protection 
of  watchmen,  in  their  grand  climacteric,  and  exposed  to  every 
species  of  depredation  and  insult. 

I  have  been  nine  hours  in  sailing  from  Dover  to  Calais,  before 
the  invention  of  steam.  It  took  me  nine  hours  to  go  from  Taunton 
to  Bath,  before  the  invention  of  railroads,  and  I  now  go,  in  six 
hours,  from  Taunton  to  London  !  In  going  from  Taunton  to  Bath, 
I  suffered  between  ten  thousand  and  twelve  thousand  severe 
contusions,  before  stone-breaking  Macadam  was  born. 

I  paid  fifteen  pounds,  in  a  single  year,  for  repairs  of  carriage- 
springs  on  the  pavement  of  London ;  and  I  now  glide,  without 
noise  or  fracture,  on  wooden  pavements. 

I  can  walk,  by  the  assistance  of  the  police,  from  one  end  of 
London  to  the  other,  without  molestation ;  or,  if  tired,  get  into  a 
cheap  and  active  cab,  instead  of  those  cottages  on  wheels,  which 
the  hackney-coaches  were  at  the  beginning  of  my  life. 

I  had  no  umbrella!  They  were  little  used,  and  very  dear. 
There  were  no  waterproof  hats,  and  my  hat  has  often  been  reduced 
by  rains  into  its  primitive  pulp. 

I  could  not  keep  my  smallclothes  in  their  proper  place,  for 
braces  were  unknown.  If  I  had  the  gout,  there  was  no  colchicum. 
If  I  was  bilious,  there  was  no  calomel.  If  I  was  attacked  by  ague, 
there  was  no  quinine.  There  were  filthy  coffeehouses  instead  of 
elegant  clubs.     Game  could  not  be  bought.     Quarrels  about  un- 

*  This  is  published  in  Longman's  octavo  edition  of  Sydney  Smith's  works 
It  was  written  for  a  Loudon  newspaper  the  year  before  tlie  author's  death. 


296  IMPROVEMENTS. 

commuted  tithes  were  endless.     The  corruption  of  Parliament, 
before  Reform,  infamous. 

There  were  no  banks  to  receive  the  savings  of  the  poor.  The 
Poor-Laws  were  gradually  sapping  the  vitals  of  the  country ;  and 
whatever  miseries  I  suffered,  I  had  no  post  to  whisk  my  complaints, 
for  a  single  penny,  to  the  remotest  corners  of  the  empke ;  and 
yet,  in  spite  of  all  these  privations,  I  lived  on  quietly,  and  am  now 
ashamed  that  I  was  not  more  discontented,  and  utterly  surprised 
that  all  these  changes  and  inventions  did  not  occur  two  centuries 


I  forgot  to  add,  that  as  the  basket  of  stage-coaches,  in  which 
luggage  was  then  carried,  had  no  springs,  your  clothes  were  rubbed 
all  to  pieces ;  and  that,  even  in  the  best  society,  one  third  of  the 
gentlemen,  at  least,  were  always  drunk. 


PETER  PLYMLEY.  297 


PASSAGES  FROM  PETER  PLYMLEY/ 


INTRODUCTION. 


Dear  Abraham:  A  worthier  and  better  man  than  yourself 
does  not  exist ;  but  I  have  always  told  you,  from  the  time  of  our 
boyhood,  that  you  were  a  bit  of  a  goose.  Your  parochial  affairs 
are  governed  with  exemplary  order  and  regularity ;  you  are  as 
powerful  in  the  vestry  as  Mr.  Perceval  is  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons—  and,  I  must  say,  with  much  more  reason;  nor  do  I  know 
any  church  where  the  faces  and  smock-frocks  of  the  congregation 
are  so  clean,  or  their  eyes  so  uniformly  directed  to  the  preacher. 
There  is  another  point  upon  which  I  will  do  you  ample  justice ; 
and  that  is,  that  the  eyes  so  directed  toward  you  are  wide  open ; 
for  the  rustic  has,  in  general,  good  principles,  though  he  cannot 
control  his  animal  habits ;  and  however  loud  he  may  snore,  his 
face  is  perpetually  turned  toward  the  fountain  of  orthodoxy. 

Having  done  you  this  act  of  justice,  I  shall  proceed,  according 
to  our  ancient  intimacy  and  familiarity,  to  explain  to  you  my 
opinions  about  the  Catholics,  and  to  I'eply  to  yours. 

In  the  first  place,  my  sweet  Abraham,  the  Pope  is  not  landed, 
nor  are  there  any  curates  sent  out  after  him  —  nor  has  he  been  hid 
at  St.  Alban's  by  the  Dowager  Lady  Spencer — nor  dined  pri- 
vately at  Holland  House — nor  been  seen  near  Dropmore.t  K 
these  fears  exist  (which  I  do  not  believe),  they  exist  only  in  the 
mind  of  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer ;  they  emanate  from  his 
zeal  for  the  Protestant  interest ;  and  though  they  reflect  the  high- 

*  "  Letters  on  the  Subject  of  the  Catholics,  to  My  Brother  Abraliam,  who 
lives  in  the  Countiy."     By  Peter  Plymley. 

t  The  seat  of  Lord  Grenville,  who  advocated  concessions  to  the  Catholics 

13* 


298  BURNING  ANC  HANGING. 

est  honour  upon  the  dehcate  irritabihty  of  his  faith,  must  certainly 
be  considered  as  more  ambiguous  proofs  of  the  sanity  and  vigour 
of  his  understanding.  By  this  time,  however,  the  best-informed 
clergy  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  metropolis  are  convinced  that 
the  rumour  is  without  foundation ;  and,  though  the  Pope  is  proba- 
bly hovering  about  our  coast  in  a  fishing  smack,  it  is  most  likely 
he  will  fall  a  prey  to  the  vigilance  of  our  cruisers  ;  and  it  is  certain 
he  has  not  yet  polluted  the  Protestantism  of  our  soil. 

Exactly  in  the  same  manner,  the  story  of  the  wooden  gods  seized 
at  Charing  Cross,  by  an  order  from  the  Foreign  Officp,  turns  out 
to  be  without  the  shadow  of  a  foundation ;  instead  of  the  angels 
and  archangels,  mentioned  by  the  informer,  nothing  was  discovered 
but  a  wooden  image  of  Lord  Mulgrave,  going  down  to  Chatham,  as 
a  head-peace  for  the  Spanker  gun-vessel ;  it  was  an  exact  resem- 
blance of  his  lordship  in  liis  military  uniform ;  and  therefore  as 
little  like  a  god  as  can  well  be  imagined. 


CATHOLIC  AND  PROTESTANT  PERSECUTIONS. 

I  FOUND  in  your  letter  the  usual  remarks  about  fire,  fagot,  and 
bloody  Mary.  Are  you  aware,  my  dear  priest,  that  there  were  as 
many  persons  put  to  death  for  religious  opinions  under  the  mild 
Elizabeth,  as  under  the  bloody  INIary  ?  The  reign  of  the  former 
was,  to  be  sure,  ten  times  as  long ;  but  I  only  mention  the  fact, 
merely  to  show  you  that  something  depends  upon  the  age  in  which 
men  live,  as  well  as  on  their  religious  opinions.  Three  hundred 
years  ago,  men  burned  and  hanged  each  other  for  these  opinions. 
Time  has  softened  Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant ;  they  both  re- 
quired it,  though  each  perceives  only  his  own  improvement,  and  is 
blind  to  that  of  the  other.  We  are  all  the  creatures  of  circum- 
stances. I  know  not  a  kinder  and  better  man  than  yourself:  but  you 
(if  you  had  lived  in  those  times)  would  certainly  have  roasted  your 
Catholic ;  and  I  promise  you,  if  the  first  exciter  of  this  religious 
mob  had  been  as  powerful  then  as  he  is  now,  you  would  soon  have 
been  elevated  to  the  mitre.  I  do  not  go  the  length  of  saying  that 
the  world  has  suffered  as  much  from  Protestant  as  from  Catholic 
persecution  ;  far  from  it ;  but  you  should  remember  the  Catholics 
had  all  the  power,  when  the  idea  first  started  up  in  the  world,  that 
there  could  be  two  modes  of  faith ;  and  that  it  was  much  more 


EXCLUSIVENESS.  299 

natural  that  they  should  attempt  to  crush  this  divei'sity  of  opinion 
by  great  and  cruel  efforts,  than  that  the  Protestants  should  rage 
against  those  who  differ  from  them,  when  the  very  basis  of  their 
system  was  complete  freedom  in  all  spiritual  matters. 


THE    CHURCH    IN    DANGER. 

The  English,  I  believe,  are  as  truly  rehgious  as  any  nation  in 
Europe ;  I  know  no  gi-eater  blessing ;  but  it  cari-ies  with  it  this 
evil  in  its  train,  that  any  villain  who  will  bawl  out  "  The  church  is 
in  danger  /"  may  get  a  place,  and  a  good  pension ;  and  that  any 
administration  who  will  do  the  same  thing,  may  bring  a  set  of  men 
into  power  who,  at  a  moment  of  stationary  and  passive  piety,  would 
be  hooted  by  the  very  boys  in  the  streets.  But  it  is  not  all  re- 
ligion ;  it  is,  in  great  part,  that  narrow  and  exclusive  spirit,  which 
delights  to  keep  the  common  blessings  of  sun,  and  air,  and  freedom, 
from  other  human  beings.  "  Your  religion  has  always  been  de- 
graded ;  you  are  in  the  dust,  and  I  will  take  care  you  never  rise 
again.  I  should  enjoy  less  the  possession  of  an  earthly  good,  by 
every  additional  person  to  whom  it  was  extended."  You  may  not 
be  aware  of  it  yourself,  most  reverend  Abraham,  but  you  deny  their 
freedom  to  the  Catholics  upon  the  same  principle  that  Sarah  your 
wife  refuses  to  give  the  receipt  for  a  ham  or  a  gooseberry  dump- 
ling ;  she  values  her  receipts,  not  because  they  secure  to  her  a  cer- 
tain flavour,  but  because  they  remind  her  that  her  neighbours  Avant 
it — a  feeling  laughable  in  a  priestess,  shameful  in  a  priest;  venial 
when  it  Avithholds  the  blessings  of  a  ham,  tyrannical  and  execrable 
when  it  narrows  the  boon  of  rehgious  freedom. 


A    GOOD    MAN   AND    BAD    MINISTER. 

You  spend  a  great  deal  of  ink  about  the  character  of  the  present 
Prime  Minister.  Grant  you  all  that  you  write ;  I  say,  I  fear  he 
wiU  ruin  Ireland,  and  pursue  a  line  of  policy  destructive  to  the  true 
interest  of  his  country :  and  then  you  tell  me  he  is  faithful  to  Mrs. 
Perceval,  and  kind  to  the  Master  Percevals  !  These  are,  undoubt- 
edly, the  first  qualifications  to  be  looked  to  in  a  time  of  the  most 
serious  public  danger ;  but  somehow  or  another  (if  pul)lic  and  pri- 


300  EELIGIOUS   FIGHTING   TEST. 

vate  virtue  must  always  be  incompatible),  I  should  prefer  that  he 
destroyed  the  domestic  happiness  of  Wood  or  Cockell,  owed  for 
the  veal  of  the  preceding  year,  whipj)ed  his  boys,  and  saved  his 
country. 

SOLDIERS    AND    THEOLOGY. 

What  is  it  the  Catholics  ask  of  you  ?*  Do  not  exclude  us  from 
the  honours  and  emoluments  of  the  state,  because  we  worship  God 
in  one  way,  and  you  worship  him  in  another — in  a  period  of  the 
deepest  peace,  and  the  fattest  prosperity,  this  would  be  a  fair  re- 
quest ;  it  should  be  granted,  if  Lord  Hawkesbury  f  had  reached 
Paris,  if  Mr.  Canning's  interpreter  had  threatened  the  Senate  in 
an  opening  speech,  or  Mr.  Perceval  explained  to  them  the  improve- 
ments he  meant  to  introduce  into  the  Catholic  religion  ;  but  to  deny 
the  Irish  this  justice  now,  in  the  present  state  of  Europe,  and  in 
the  summer  months,  just  as  the  season  for  destroying  kingdoms  is 
coming  on,  is  (beloved  Abraham),  whatever  you  may  think  of  it, 
little  short  of  positive  insanity. 

Here  is  a  frigate  attacked  by  a  corsair  of  immense  strength  and 
size,  rigging  cut,  masts  in  danger  of  coming  by  the  board,  four  feet 
water  in  the  hold,  men  dropping  off  very  fast ;  in  this  di-eadful  sit- 
uation how  do  you  think  the  captain  acts  (whose  name  shall  be 
Perceval)  ?  He  calls  all  hands  upon  deck  ;  talks  to  them  of  king, 
country,  glory,  sweethearts,  gin,  French  prisons,  wooden  shoes, 
old  England,  and  hearts  of  oak ;  they  give  three  cheers,  rush  lo 
their  guns,  and  after  a  tremendous  conflict,  succeed  in  beating  off 
the  enemy.  Not  a  syllable  of  all  this ;  this  is  not  the  manner  in 
which  the  honourable  commander  goes  to  work ;  the  first  thing  he 
does  is  to  secure  twenty  or  thirty  of  his  prime  sailors,  who  happen 
to  be  Catholics,  to  clap  them  in  irons,  and  set  over  them  a  guard 
of  as  many  Protestants ;  having  taken  this  admirable  method  of 
defending  himself  against  his  infidel  opponents,  he  goes  upon  deck, 
reminds  the  sailors,  in  a  very  bitter  harangue,  that  they  are  of 
different  religions ;  exhorts  the  Episcopal  gunner  not  to  trust  to 

*  A  Catholic  Naval  and  Military  Service  Bill,  allowing  Catholics  to  hold 
commissions  in  the  army  and  navy,  was  under  discussion  in  Parliament. 

t  The  "  lesser  of  the  two  Jenkiasons,"  soon  after  (on  the  death  of  his  fa- 
ther) Lord  Liverpool.  He  was  Home  Secretary  at  the  date  of  the  Plymley 
Letters. 


THE   CLAPHAMITES.  801 

the  Presbyterian  quarter-master ;  issues  positive  orders  that  the 
Cathohcs  should  be  fired  at  upon  the  first  appearance  of  discontent; 
rushes  through  blood  and  brains,  examining  his  men  in  the  cate- 
chism and  thirty -nine  articles,  and  positively  forbids  every  one  to 
sponge  or  ram  who  has  not  taken  the  sacrament  according  to  the 
Church  of  England.  Was  it  right  to  take  out  a  captain  made  of 
excellent  British  stuff,  and  to  put  in  such  a  man  as  this  ?  Is  not 
he  more  like  a  parson,  or  a  talking  lawyer,  than  a  thorough-bred 
seaman?  And  built  as  she  is  of  heart  of  oak,  and  admirably 
manned,  is  it  possible,  with  such  a  captain,  to  save  this  ship  from 
going  to  the  bottom  ? 


MR.  CANNING    AND    HIS    PARASITES. 

Nature  descends  down  to  infinite  smallness.  Mr.  Canning  has 
his  parasites ;  and  if  you  take  a  large  buzzing  blue-bottle  fly,  and 
look  at  it  in  a  microscope,  you  may  see  twenty  or  thirty  little  ugly 
insects  crawling  about  it,  which  doubtless  think  their  fly  to  be  the 
bluest,  grandest,  mei-riest,  most  important  animal  in  the  universe, 
and  are  convinced  the  world  would  be  at  an  end  if  it  ceased  to 
buzz. 


SUBSTITUTE    THE    CLAPHAMITES    FOR    THE    CATHOLICS. 

I  AD  JUT  there  is  a  vast  luxury  in  selecting  a  particular  set  of 
Christians,  and  in  worrying  them  as  a  boy  worries  a  puppy-dog ; 
it  is  an  amusement  in  which  all  the  young  EngUsh  are  brought  up 
from  their  earliest  days.  I  like  the  idea  of  saying  to  men  who  use 
a  different  hassock  from  me,  that  till  they  change  their  hassock, 
they  shall  never  be  colonels,  aldermen,  or  parHament-men.  "Wliile 
I  am  gratifying  my  personal  insolence  respecting  religious  forms, 
I  fondle  myself  into  an  idea  that  I  am  religious,  and  that  I  am  do- 
ing my  duty  in  the  most  exemplary  (as  I  certainly  am  in  the  most 
easy)  way.  But  then,  my  good  Abraham,  this  sport,  admirable  as 
it  is,  is  become,  with  respect  to  the  Catholics,  a  little  dangerous ; 
and  if  we  are  not  extremely  careful  in  taking  the  amusement,  we 
shall  tumble  into  the  holy  water,  and  be  drowned.  As  it  seems 
necessary  to  your  idea  of  an  estabhshed  church  to  have  somebody 
to  worry  and  torment,  suppose  we  were  to  select  for  this  purpose 


302  MR.    HAWKINS  BROWN. 

William  "Wilbeii :rce,Esq.,  and  the  patent  Christians  of  Clapham.* 
We  shall  by  this  expedient  enjoy  the  same  opportunity  for  crueltj- 
and  injustice,  without  being  exposed  to  the  same  risks ;  we  will 
compel  them  to  abjure  vital  clergymen  by  a  public  test,  to  deny 
that  the  said  William  Wilberforce  has  any  power  of  working  mir- 
acles, touching  for  barrenness  or  any  other  infirmity,  or  that  he  is 
endowed  with  any  preternatural  gift  whatever.  We  will  swear 
them  to  the  doctrine  of  good  works,  compel  them  to  preach  com- 
mon sense,  and  to  hear  it ;  vo  frequent  bishops,  deans,  and  other 
high  churchmen ;  and  to  appear  (once  in  the  quarter  at  the  least) 
at  some  melodrame,  opera,  pantomime,  or  other  light  scenical  rep- 
resentation ;  in  short,  we  will  gratify  the  love  of  insolence  and 
power ;  we  will  enjoy  the  old  orthodox  sport  of  witnessing  the  im- 
potent anger  of  men  compelled  to  submit  to  civil  degradation,  or  to 
sacrifice  their  notions  of  truth  to  ours.  And  all  this  we  may  do 
without  the  slightest  risk,  because  their  numbers  are  (as  yet)  not 
very  considerable.  Cruelty  and  injustice  must,  of  course,  exist ; 
but  why  connect  them  with  danger?  Why  torture  a  bull-dog 
when  you  can  get  a  frog  or  a  rabbit  ?  I  am  sure  my  proposal  will 
meet  with  the  most  universal  approbation.  Do  not  be  apprehen- 
sive of  any  opposition  from  ministers.  If  it  is  a  case  of  hatred,  we 
are  sure  that  one  man  will  defend  it  by  the  Gospel ;  if  it  abridges 
human  freedom,  we  know  that  another  will  find  precedents  for  it 
in  the  Revolution. 


MR.    ISAAC    HAWKINS    BROWN. 

Then  comes  Mr.  Isaac  Hawkins  Brown  (the  gentleman  who 
danced  so  badlyf  at  the  court  of  Naples),  and  asks,  if  it  is  not  an 

*  "  The  Clapham  Sect"  is  the  subject  of  an  eloquent  article  by  James 
Stephen,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  July,  1844.  The  designation  was 
given  to  an  eminent  circle  of  friends  — "  men  whom  the  second  generation  of 
the  Evangelical  party  acknowledged  as  their  secular  chiefs" — who  met  at 
the  villas  at  Clapham,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London,  occupied  by  Henry 
Thornton,  William  Wilberforce,  and  Granville  Sharpe.  Thomas  Clarkson, 
Zachary  Macaulay  (father  of  the  historian),  Mr.  Stephen  (father  of  the  re- 
viewer), Isaac.  Milner,  Dean  of  Carlisle,  and  Charles  Simeon  of  Cambridge, 
were  honoured  members  of  the  society  to  which  Perceval  the  minister,  "  the 
evangelical  Perceval,"  as  Smith  styles  him,  was  also,  in  a  measure,  attached. 

t  In  the  third  year  of  his  present  majesty,  and  in  the  thirtieth  of  his  owu 


SCOTLAND.  803 

anomaly  to  educate  men  in  another  religion  than  your  own  ?  It 
certainly  is  our  duty  to  get  rid  of  error,  and  above  all,  of  religious 
error ;  but  this  is  not  to  be  done  per  saltum,  or  the  measure  will 
miscarry,  like  the  queen.  It  may  be  very  easy  to  dance  away  the 
royal  embryo  of  a  great  kingdom  ;  but  Mr.  Hawkins  Brdwn,  must 
look  before  he  leaps,  when  his  object  is  to  crush  an  opposite  sect  in 
rehgion ;  false  steps  aid  the  one  effect  as  much  as  they  are  fatal  to 
the  other;  it  will  require  not  only  the  lapse  of  Mr.  Hawkins 
Brown,  but  the  lapse  of  centuries,  before  the  absurdities  of  the 
Catholic  religion  are  laughed  at  as  much  as  they  deserve  to  be ; 
but  surely,  in  the  meantime,  the  Cathohc  rehgion  is  better  than 
none ;  four  millions  of  Catholics  are  better  than  four  millions  of 
wild  beasts  ;  two  hundi-ed  priests,  educated  by  our  own  govern- 
ment, are  better  than  the  same  number  educated  by  the  man  who 
means  to  destroy  us. 


EXAMPLE    OF    SCOTLAND. 

If  the  great  mass  of  the  people,  environed  as  they  are  on  every 
side  with  Jenkinsons,  Percevals,  Melvilles,  and  other  perils,  were 
to  pray  for  Divine  illumination  and  aid,  what  more  could  Provi- 
dence in  its  mercy  do  than  send  them  the  example  of  Scotland  ? 
For  what  a  length  of  years  was  it  attempted  to  compel  the  Scotch 
to  change  their  religion  ?  horse,  foot,  artillery,  and  armed  preben- 
daries, were  sent  out  after  the  Presbyterian  parsons  and  their  con- 
gregations. The  Percevals  of  those  days  called  for  blood;  this 
caE  is  never  made  in  vain,  and  blood  was  shed ;  but,  to  the  aston- 
ishment and  horror  of  the  Percevals  of  those  days,  they  could  not 
introduce  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  nor  prevent  that  meta- 
physical people  from  going  to  heaven  their  true  way,  instead  of 
our  true  way.  With  a  little  oatmeal  for  food,  and  a  little  sulphur 
for  friction,  allaying  cutaneous  irritation  with  the  one  hand,  and 

age,  Mr.  Isaac  Hawkins  Brown,  then  upon  his  travels,  danced  one  evening 
at  the  court  of  Naples.  His  dress  was  a  volcano  silk  with  lava  buttons. 
"Whether  (as  the  Neapolitan  wits  said)  he  had  studied  dancing  under  St.  Vi- 
tus, or  whether  David,  dancing  in  a  linen  vest,  was  his  model,  is  not  known ; 
but  Mr.  Bcown  danced  with  such  inconceivable  alacrity  and  vigour,  that  ho 
threw  the  Queen  of  Naples  into  convulsions  of  laughter,  which  terminated  iu 
a  miscarriage,  and  changed  the  dynasty  of  the  Neapolitan  throne. — Author's 
Note 


304  ENGLAND   INVADED. 

liolding  liis  Calvinistical  Creed  in  the  other,  Sawney  ran  away  to 
liis  flinty  hills,  sung  his  psalm  out  of  tune  his  own  way,  and  listened 
to  his  sermon  of  two  hours  long,  amid  the  I'ough  and  imposing  mel- 
ancholy of  the  tallest  tliistles.  But  Sawney  brought  up  his  un- 
breeched  offspring  in  a  cordial  hatred  of  his  oppressors  ;  and  Scot- 
land was  as  much  a  part  of  the  weakness  of  England  then  aa 
Ireland  is  at  this  moment.  The  true  and  the  only  remedy  was 
applied ;  the  Scotch  were  suffered  to  worship  God  after  their  own 
tii'esome  manner,  without  pain,  penalty,  and  privation.  No  light- 
nings descended  from  heaven  ;  the  country  was  not  ruined ;  the 
world  is  not  yet  come  to  an  end ;  the  dignitaries,  who  foretold  all 
these  consequences,  are  utterly  forgotten ;  and  Scotland  has  ever 
since  been  an  increasing  source  of  strength  to  Great  Britain.  In 
the  six  hundredth  year  of  our  empire  over  Ireland,  we  are  making 
laws  to  transport  a  man,  if  he  is  found  out  of  his  house  after 
eight  o'clock  at  night.  That  this  is  necessary,  I  know  too  well ; 
but  tell  me  why  it  is  necessary  ?  It  is  not  necessary  in  Greece 
where  the  Turks  are  masters. 


ENGLAND    IN    AN    INVASION. 

You  cannot  imagine,  you  say,  that  England  will  ever  be  ruined 
and  conquered ;  and  for  no  other  reason  that  I  can  find,  but  be- 
cause it  seems  so  very  odd  it  should  be  ruined  and  conquered 
Alas !  so  reasoned,  in  their  time,  the  Austrian,  Russian,  and  Prus 
sian  Plymleys.  But  the  English  are  brave ;  so  were  all  thes< 
nations.  You  might  get  together  a  hundred  thousand  men  in- 
dividually brave ;  but  without  generals  capable  of  commanding 
such  a  machine,  it  would  be  as  useless  as  a  first-rate  man-of-war 
manned  by  Oxford  clergyman  or  Parisian  shopkeepers.  I  do  not 
say  this  to  the  disparagement  of  English  officers ;  they  have  had 
no  means  of  acquiring  experience ;  but  I  do  say  it  to  create  alarm  ; 
for  we  do  not  appear,  to  me,  to  be  half  alarmed  enough,  or  to  en- 
tertain that  sense  of  our  danger  which  leads  to  the  most  obvious 
means  of  self-defence.  As  for  the  spirit  of  the  peasantry,  in 
making  a  gallant  defence  behind  hedge-rows,  and  through  plate- 
racks  and  hen-coops,  highly  as  I  think  of  their  bravery,  I  do  not 
know  any  nation  in  Europe  so  likely  to  be  struck  with  panic  as 
the  English;   and  this  from  their  total  unacquaintance  with  the 


HEROICS.  305 

Bcience  of  war.  Okl  wheat  and  beans  blazing  for  twenty  miles 
round ;  cart  mares  shot ;  sows  of  Lord  Somerville's*  breed  run- 
ning wild  over  the  country ;  the  minister  of  the  parish,  wounded 
sorely  in  his  hinder  parts  ;  Mrs.  Plymley  in  fits  ;  all  these  scenes 
of  Avar  an  Austi'ian  or  a  Russian  has  seen  three  or  four  times  ;  but 
it  is  now  three  centuries  suice  an  English  pig  has  fallen  in  a  fair 
battle  upon  English  ground,  or  a  farmhouse  been  rifled,  or  a  clergy- 
man's Avife  been  subjected  to  any  other  proposals  of  love  than  the 
connubial  endearments  of  her  sleek  and  orthodox  mate.  The  old 
edition  of  Plutai'ch's  Lives,  wliich  lies  in  the  corner  of  your  par- 
lour window,  has  contributed  to  work  you  up  to  the  most  romantic 
expectations  of  our  Roman  behaviour.  You  are  persuaded  that 
Lord  Amherst  will  defend  Kew  Bridge  like  Codes ;  that  some 
maid  of  honour  will  break  away  from  her  captivity,  and  swim  over 
the  Thames ;  that  the  Duke  of  York  will  burn  his  capitulating 
hand  ;  and  little  Mr.  Sturges  Bournef  give  forty  years'  purchase  for 
Moulsham  Hall,  while  the  French  are  encamped  upon  it.  I  hope 
we  shall  witness  all  tliis,  if  the  French  do  come ;  but,  in  the  mean- 
time, I  am  so  enchanted  with  the  ordinary  English  behaviour  of 
these  invaluable  persons,  that  I  earnestly  pray  no  opportunity  may 
be  given  them  for  Roman  valour,  and  for  those  very  un-Roman 
pensions  wliich  they  would  all,  of  course,  take  especial  care  to 
claim  in  consequence.  But  whatever  was  our  conduct,  if  every 
ploughman  was  as  great  a  hero  as  he  Avho  Avas  called  from  his  oxen ' 
to  save  Rome  from  her  enemies,  I  should  still  say,  that  at  such  a 
crisis  you  Avant  the  affections  of  all  your  subjects  in  both  islands ; 
there  is  no  spirit  which  you  must  alienate,  no  heart  you  must  avert ; 
every  man  must  feel  he  has  a  country,  and  that  there  is  an  urgent 
and  pressing  cause  Avhy  he  should  expose  himself  to  death. 

*  John,  fifteenth  Lord  Somerville,  1765-1819.  He  was  eminent  for  his 
interest  in  agricultural  affairs,  and  the  author  of  several  publications  on  those 
subjects.  His  family  residence  was  in  Somersetshire,  but  he  had  a  seat  on 
the  Tweed,  near  Abbotsford,  where  he  enjoyed  the  warm  friendship  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  Avho  called  him,  his  "  master  in  the  art  of  planting."  Scott 
edited  the  family  history,  "  The  Memorie  of  the  Somervilles,"  of  which 
Lockhart  says  :  "  as  far  as  I  know,  the  best  of  its  class  in  any  language." 

t  There  is  nothing  more  objectionable  in  Plymley's  Letters,  than  the  abuse 
of  Mr.  Sturges  Bourne,  who  is  an  honourable,  able,  and  excellent  person ; 
but  such  are  the  malevolent  effects  of  party  spirit. — Author's  Note.  Sturges 
Bourne,  the  protege  and  political  friend  of  Canning,  had,  at  several  times,  a 
scat  in  the  cabinet.     He  died  in  1845,  at  the  age  of  seventy-six. 


306  EED-HAIEED  MEN. 

IDLE    FEARS    OF    POPERY. 

As  fo .'  the  enormous  wax  candles,  and  superstitious  mummeries^ 
and  painted  jackets  of  the  Catholic  priests,  I  fear  them  not.  Tell 
me  that  the  world  will  return  again  under  the  influence  of  the 
small-pox  ;  that  Lord  Castlereagh  will  hereafter  oppose  the  power 
of  the  court ;  that  Lord  Howick*  and  Mr.  Grattan  will  do  each 
of  them  a  mean  and  dishonourable  action ;  that  anybody  who  has 
heard  Lord  Redesdalef  speak  once  will  knowingly  and  willingly 
hear  him  again ;  that  Lord  Eldon  has  assented  to  the  fact  of  two 
and  two  making  four,  without  shedding  tears,  or  expressing  the 
smallest  doubt  or  scruple ;  tell  me  any  other  thing  absurd  or  in- 
credible, but,  for  the  love  of  common  sense,  let  me  hear  no  more 
of  the  danger  to  be  apprehended  from  the  general  diffusion  of 
Popery.  It  is  too  absurd  to  be  reasoned  upon ;  every  man  feels 
it  is  nonsense  when  he  hears  it  stated,  and  so  does  every  man 
while  he  is  stating  it. 


A    RED-HAIR    DISQUALIFICATION. 

I  HAVE  often  thought,  if  the  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  had 
excluded  aU  persons  with  red  hair  from  the  House  of  Commons, 
of  the  throes  and  convulsions  it  would  occasion  to  restore  them  to 
their  natural  rights.  What  mobs  and  riots  would  it  produce  ?  To» 
what  infinite  abuse  and  obloquy  would  the  capillary  patriot  be 
exposed  ?  what  wormwood  would  distil  from  Mr,  Perceval,  what 
froth  would  drop  from  Mr.  Canning;  how  (I  will  not  say  my, 
but  our  Lord  Hawkesbury,  for  he  belongs  to  us  all),  how  our 
Lord  Hawkesbury  would  work  away  about  the  hair  of  King 
WiUiam  and  Lord  Somers,  and  the  authors  of  the  great  and 
glorious  Revolution ;  how  Lord  Eldon  would  appeal  to  the 
Deity  and  his  own  virtues,  and  to  the  hair  of  his  children: 
some  would  say  that  red-haired  men  were  superstitious ;  some 
would  prove  they  were  atheists ;  they  would  be  petitioned  against 
as  the  friends  of  slaveiy,  and  the  advocates  for  revolt ;  in  short, 
such  a  corrupter  of  the  heart  and  the  understanding  is  the  spirit 

*  Afterward  Earl  Grey. 

t  John  Mitford,  Lord  Redesdale,  brother  of  Mitford  the  historian  of 
Greece,  was  Lord-High-Chancellor  of  L-eland ;  raised  to  the  Peerage  in  1802. 
He  died  in  1830,  at  the  age  of  eighty-one. 


STORY   OF   A   VILLAGE.  307 

of  persecution,  that  these  unfortunate  people  (conspired  against  by 
their  fellow-subjects  of  every  complexion),  if  they  did  not  emigrate 
to  countries  whei-e  hair  of  another  colour  Avas  persecuted,  would 
be  driven  to  the  falsehood  of  perukes,  or  the  hypocrisy  of  the 
Tricosian  fluid. 


THE   CATHOLICS   ASKING   FOR   MORE  —  AN   APOLOGUE. 

What  amuses  me  the  most  is,  to  hear  of  the  indulgences  which 
the  Catholics  have  received,  and  their  exorbitance  in  not  being 
satisfied  with  those  indulgences :  now  if  you  complain  to  me  that 
a  man  is  obtrusive  and  shameless  in  his  requests,  and  that  it  is 
impossible  to  bring  him  to  reason,  I  must  first  of  all  hear  the 
Avhole  of  j-our  conduct  toward  him ;  for  you  may  have  taken  from 
him  so  much  in  the  first  instance,  that,  in  spite  of  a  long  series  of 
restitution,  a  vast  latitude  for  petition  may  still  remain  behind. 

There  is  a  village  (no  matter  where)  in  which  the  inhabitants, 
on  one  day  in  the  year,  sit  down  to  a  dinner  prepared  at  the  com- 
mon expense ;  by  an  extraordinary  piece  of  tyranny  (which  Lord 
Hawkesbury  would  call  the  wisdom  of  the  village  ancestors),  the 
inhabitants  of  three  of  the  streets,  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  seized 
upon  the  inhabitants  of  the  fourth  street,  bound  them  hand  and 
foot,  laid  them  upon  their  backs,  and  compelled  them  to  look  on 
while  the  rest  were  stuffing  themselves  with  beef  and  beer ;  the 
next  year,  the  inhabitants  of  the  persecuted  street  (though  they 
contributed  an  equal  quota  of  the  expense)  were  treated  precisely 
in  the  same  manner.  The  tyranny  grew  into  a  custom ;  and  (as 
the  manner  of  our  nature  is)  it  was  considered  as  the  most  sacred 
of  all  duties  to  keep  thesfe  poor  fellows  without  their  annual 
dinner ;  tlie  village  was  so  tenacious  of  this  practice,  that  nothing 
could  induce  them  to  resign  it ;  every  enemy  to  it  was  looked  upon 
as  a  disbeliever  in  Divine  Providence,  and  any  nefarious  church- 
warden who  wished  to  succeed  in  his  election  had  notliing  to  do 
but  to  represent  his  antagonist  as  an  abolitionist,  in  order  to  frus- 
trate his  ambition,  endanger  his  hfe,  and  throw  the  village  into  a 
state  of  the  most  dreadful  commotion.  By  degrees,  however,  the 
obnoxious  street  grew  to  be  so  well-peopled,  and  its  inhabitants  so 
firmly  united,  that  their  oppressors,  more  afraid  of  injustice,  were 
more  disposed  to  be  just.     At  the  next  dinner  they  are  unbound. 


308  A   SHARE   OF   THE   DINNER. 

the  year  after  allowed  to  sit  upright,  then  a  bit  of  bread  and  a 
glass  of  water ;  till  at  last,  after  a  long  series  of  concessions,  they 
are  emboldened  to  ask,  in  pretty  plain  terms,  that  they  may  be 
allowed  to  sit  down  at  the  bottom  of  the  table,  and  to  fill  their 
bellies  as  well  as  the  rest.  Forthwith  a  general  cry  of  shame  and 
scandal :  "  Ten  years  ago,  were  you  not  laid  upon  your  backs  ? 
Don't  you  remember  what  a  great  thing  you  thought  it  to  get  a 
piece  of  bread  ?  How  thankful  you  were  for  cheese-parings  ? 
Have  you  forgotten  that  memorable  era,  when  the  lord  of  the 
manor  interfered  to  obtain  for  you  a  slice  of  the  public  pudding  ? 
And  now,  with  an  audacity  only  equalled  by  your  ingratitude,  you 
have  the  impudence  to  ask  for  knives  and  forks,  and  to  request, 
in  terms  too  plain  to  be  mistaken,  that  you  may  sit  down  to  table 
with  the  rest,  and  be  indulged  even  with  beef  and  beer :  there  are 
not  more  than  half  a  dozen  dishes  which  we  have  reserved  for 
ourselves ;  the  rest  has  been  thrown  open  to  you  in  the  utmost 
profusion ;  you  have  potatoes,  and  carrots,  suet-dumplings,  sops  in 
the  pan,  and  delicious  toast  and  water,  in  incredible  quantities. 
Beef,  mutton,  lamb,  pork,  and  veal,  are  ours  ;  and  if  you  were  not 
the  most  restless  and  dissatisfied  of  human  beings,  you  would 
never  think  of  aspiring  to  enjoy  them." 

Is  not  this,  my  dainty  Abraham,  the  very  nonsense,  and  the  very 
insult,  which  is  talked  to  and  practised  upon  the  Catholics  ?  You 
are  surprised  that  men  who  have  tasted  of  partial  justice,  should 
ask  for  perfect  justice ;  that  he  who  has  been  robbed  of  coat  and 
cloak  will  not  be  contented  with  the  restitution  of  one  of  his  gar- 
ments. He  would  be  a  very  lazy  blockhead  if  he  were  content, 
and  I  (who,  though  an  inhabitant  of  the  village,  have  preserved, 
thank  God,  some  sense  of  justice)  most  earnestly  counsel  these 
half-fed  claimants  to  persevere  in  their  just  demands,  till  they  are 
admitted  to  a  more  complete  share  of  a  dinner  for  which  they  pay 
as  much  as  the  others ;  and  if  they  see  a  little  attenuated  laAvyer 
squabbling  at  the  head  of  their  opponents,  let  them  desire  him  to 
empty  his  pockets,  and  to  pull  out  all  the  pieces  of  duck,  fowl,  and 
pudding,  which  he  has  filched  from  the  public  feast  to  carry  horn© 
lo  his  wife  and  children. 


GEORGE  CANNING.  309 

CANNING. 

Dear  Abraham:  In  the  correspondence  which  is  passing 
between  us,  you  are  perpetually  alluding  to  the  foreign  secretary ; 
and  in  answer  to  the  dangers  of  Ireland  which  I  am  pressing 
upon  your  notice,  you  have  nothing  to  urge  but  the  confidence 
which  you  repose  in  the  discretion  and  sound  sense  of  this  gentle- 
man. I  can  only  say,  that  I  have  listened  to  him  long  and  often, 
with  the  greatest  attention ;  I  have  used  every  exertion  in  my 
power  to  take  a  fair  measure  of  him,  and  it  appears  to  me  impos- 
sible to  hear  him  upon  any  arduous  topic  without  perceiving  that 
he  is  eminently  deficient  in  those  solid  and  serious  qualities  upon 
which,  and  upon  wliich  alone,  the  confidence  of  a  great  comitry 
can  properly  repose.  He  sweats  and  labours,  and  works  for 
sense,  and  Mr.  Ellis*  seems  always  to  think  it  is  coming,  but  it 
does  not  come;  the  machine  can't  draw  up  what  is  not  to  be  found 
in  the  spring ;  Providence  has  made  him  a  light,  jesting,  para- 
graph-writing man,  and  that  he  will  remain  to  his  dying  day. 
When  he  is  jocular  he  is  strong,  when  he  is  serious  he  is  hke 
Samson  in  a  wig ;  any  ordinary  person  is  a  match  for  him ;  a  song, 
an  ironical  letter,  a  burlesque  ode,  an  attack  in  the  newspaper 
upon  Nicoll's  eye,  a  smart  speech  of  twenty  minutes,  full  of  gross 
misrepresentations  and  clever  turns,  excellent  language,  a  spirited 
manner,  lucky  quotation,  success  in  provoking  dull  men,  some  half 
information  picked  up  in  Pall  Mall  in  the  morning ;  these  are  your 
friend's  natural  weapons  ;  all  these  things  he  can  do ;  here  I  allow 
him  to  be  truly  great ;  nay,  I  will  be  just,  and  go  still  farther,  if 
he  would  confine  himself  to  these  things,  and  consider  the  facete 
and  the  playful  to  be  the  basis  of  his  character,  he  would,  for  that 
species  of  man,  be  universally  regarded  as  a  person  of  a  very  good 
understanding ;  call  him  a  legislator,  a  reasoner,  and  the  conductor 
of  the  affairs  of  a  great  nation,  and  it  seems  to  me  as  absurd  as  if 
a  butterfly  were  to  teach  bees  to  make  honey.  That  he  is  an  ex- 
traordinaiy  writer  of  small  poetry,  and  a  diner-out  of  the  highest 
lustre,  I  do  most  readily  admit.  After  George  Selwyn,  and  per- 
haps Tickell,t  there  has  been  no  such  man  for  this  half  century. 

*  George  Ellis,  Editor  of  the  Early  English  Poets  and  Metrical  Romances, 
an  associate  of  Canning  in  the  poetry  of  the  Anti-Jacobin,  and  his  warm 
friend  through  life. 

t  Richard  Tickell  is  less  known  than  Selwyn  to  readers  of  the  present 


810  VIGOUR. 

The  foreign  secretary  is  a  gentleman,  a  respectable  as  well  as  a 
hi"-lily  a"-reeable  man  in  private  life;  but  you  may  as  well  feed  me 
with  decayed  potatoes  as  console  me  for  the  miseries  of  Ireland  by 
the  resources  of  his  sense  and  his  discretion.  It  is  only  the  public 
situation  which  this  gentleman  holds  which  entitles  me  or  induces 
me  to  say  so  much  about  him.  He  is  a  fly  in  amber ;  nobody  cares 
about  the  fly:  the  only  question  is,  How  the  devil  did  it  get  there? 
Nor  do  I  attack  him  from  the  love  of  glory,  but  from  the  love  of 
utility,  as  a  burgomaster  hunts  a  rat  m  a  Dutch  dyke,  for  fear  it 
should  flood  a  pi'ovince.* 


VIGOTTR    IN    IRELAND. 

I  CANNOT  describe  the  horror  and  disgust  which  I  felt  at 
hearing  Mr.  Perceval  call  upon  the  then  ministry  for  measures  of 
vigour  in  Ireland.  If  I  lived  at  Ilampstead  upon  stewed  meats 
and  claret;  if  I  walked  to  church  every  Sunday  before  eleven 
young  gentlemen  of  my  own  begetting,  with  their  faces  washed, 
and  their  hair  pleasingly  combed;  if  the  Almighty  had  blessed 
me  with  every  earthly  comfort — how  awfully  would  I  pause  be- 

day.  He  was  brother-in-law  of  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan*and  the  grandson 
of  Addison's  friend  and  associate  in  the  Spectator.  He  was  patronized  by 
Lord  North,  wrote  "  Anticipation,"  a  parody  on  the  speeches  at  the  opening 
of  Parliament  and  a  satire  of  the  opposition,  some  other  squibs  of  the  kind, 
and  two  plays  which  have  given  him  a  niche  in  the  Biographia  Dramatica. 

*  Set  a  wit  to  catch  a  wit !  This  character  of  Canning  seems  scant  meas- 
ure from  the  mirthful  Plymley.  The  '  fly'  was  destined  for  a  more  precious 
bit  of  amber  in  the  national  annals.  But  no  one  will  be  content  with  history 
or  biography  in  a  single  political  skirmish.  Canning's  witty  effusions  were 
freely  scattered  in  society.  The  chief  monument  of  them  which  remains  are 
his  brilliant  contributions  with  his  old  friend  of  the  microcosm,  Frere,  and 
others,  to  the  poetry  of  the  Anti-Jacobin.  Sydney  Smith,  by  the  way,  in  a 
passage  from  the  Edinburgh  Review  (ante  p.  160)  speaks  of  Canning  as  an 
Irishman.  He  was  of  Irish  parentage  and  "  accidentally,"  as  he  himself  said, 
born  in  London.  His  father,  however,  at  the  time  of  his  marriage  had  been 
a  number  of  years  a  resident  in  the  British  metropolis,  where  among  other  oc- 
cupations he  had  sustained  with  some  ability  the  part  of  a  literary  adven- 
turer. He  wrote  poems  and  a  political  pamphlet,  "  On  the  Connection  be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  her  American  Colonies,"  in  the  "general  manner" 
of  which  Mr.  Robert  Bell  finds  traces  of  "  a  curious  resemblance  to  some  pe- 
culiarities in  the  style  of  George  Canning  the  son."  —  (Life  of  Cunning, 
chapter  i.) 


SLOTH.  311 

fore  I  sent  forth  the  flame  and  the  sword  over  the  cabins  of  the 
poor,  brave,  generous,  open-hearted  j^easants  of  Ireland !  How 
easy  it  is  to  shed  human  blood — how  easy  it  is  to  persuade  our- 
selves that  it  is  our  duty  to  do  so — and  that  the  decision  has  cost 
us  a  severe  struggle — how  much,  in  all  ages,  have  wounds  and 
shrieks  and  tears  been  the  cheap  vulgar  resources  of  the  rulers  of 
mankind — how  difficult  and  how  noble  it  is  to  govern  in  kindness, 
and  to  found  an  empire  upon  the  everlasting  basis  of  justice  and 
affection!  —  But  what  do  men  call  vigour?  To  let  loose  hussars 
and  to  bring  up  artillery,  to  govern  with  lighted  matches,  and  to 
cut,  and  push,  and  prime  —  I  call  this,  not  vigour,  but  the  sloth  of 
cruelty  and  ignorance.  The  vigour  I  love  consists  in  finding  out 
wherein  subjects  are  aggrieved,  in  relieving  them,  in  studying  the 
temper  and  genius  of  a  people,  in  consulting  their  prejudices,  in 
selecting  proper  persons  to  lead  and  manage  them,  in  the  labori- 
ous, watchful,  and  difficult  task  of  increasing  public  happiness  by 
allaying  each  particular  discontent.  In  this  way  Hoche  pacified 
La  Vendee  —  and  in  this  way  only  will  Ireland  ever  be  subdued. 
But  this,  in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Perceval,  is  imbecility  and  meanness ; 
houses  are  not  broken  open  —  women  are  not  insulted  —  the 
people  seem  all  to  be  happy ;  they  are  not  rode  over  by  horses, 
and  cut  by  whips.  Do  you  call  this  vigour? — Is  this  govern- 
ment? 


GOD    SAVE   THE   KING. 

Do  not  imagine,  by  these  observations,  that  I  am  not  loyal , 
without  joining  in  the  common  cant  of  the  best  of  kings,  I  respect 
the  king  most  sincerely  as  a  good  man.  His  religion  is  better 
than  the  religion  of  Mr.  Perceval,  his  old  morality  very  superior 
to  the  old  morality  of  Mr.  Canning,  and  I  am  quite  certain  he  has 
a  safer  understanding  than  both  of  them  put  together.  Loyalty, 
within  the  bounds  of  reason  and  moderation,  is  one  of  the  great 
instruments  of  English  happiness  ;  but  the  love  of  the  king  may 
easily  become  more  strong  than  the  love  of  the  kingdom,  and  we 
may  lose  sight  of  the  public  welfare  in  our  exaggerated  admiration 
of  him  who  is  appointed  to  reign  only  for  its  j^romotion  and  sup- 
port. I  detest  Jacobinism ;  and  if  I  am  doomed  to  be  a  slave  at 
all,  I  would  rather  be  the  slave  of  a  king  than  a  cobler.     God 


312  CONQUEST   AND   CONSTIPATION. 

save  the  king,  you  say,  warms  your  heart  hke  the  sound  of  a 
trumpet.  I  cannot  make  use  of  so  violent  a  metaphor ;  but  I  am 
delighted  to  hear  it,  when  it  is  the  cry  of  genuine  affection ;  I  am 
delighted  to  hear  it,  when  they  hail  not  only  the  individual  man, 
but  the  outward  and  living  sign  of  all  English  blessings.  These 
are  noble  feeUngs,  and  the  heart  of  every  good  man  must  go  with 
them :  but  God  save  the  king,  in  these  times,  too  often  means  God 
save  my  pension  and  my  place,  God  give  my  sisters  an  allowance 
out  of  the  privy  purse — make  me  clerk  of  the  irons,  let  me 
survey  the  meltings,  let  me  live  upon  the  fruits  of  other  men's 
industry,  and  fatten  upon  the  plunder  of  the  public. 


MEDICAL    STATESMANSHIP. 

What  is  it  possible  to  say  to  such  a  man  as  the  gentleman  of 
Hampstead,  who  really  believes  it  feasible  to  convert  the  four 
million  Irish  Catholics  to  the  Protestant  religion,  and  considers 
this  as  the  best  remedy  for  the  disturbed  state  of  Ireland  ?  It  is 
not  possible  to  answer  such  a  man  with  arguments ;  we  must  come 
out  against  him  with  beads,  and  a  cowl,  and  push  him  into  a 
hermitage.  It  is  really  such  trash,  that  it  is  an  abuse  of  the  priv- 
ilege of  reasoning  to  reply  to  it.  Such  a  project  is  well  worthy 
the  statesman  who  would  bring  the  French  to  reason  by  keeping 
them  without  rhubarb,  and  exhibit  to  mankind  the  aAvful  spectacle 
of  a  nation  deprived  of  neutral  salts.  This  is  not  the  dream  of 
a  wild  apothecary  indulging  in  his  own  opium ;  this  is  not  the 
distempered  fancy  of  a  pounder  of  drugs,  delirious  from  small- 
ness  of  profits ;  but  it  is  the  sober,  deliberate,  and  systematic  scheme 
of  a  man  to  whom  the  public  safety  is  intrusted,  and  whose 
appointment  is  considered  by  many  as  a  masterpiece  of  political 
sagacity.  What  a  sublime  thought,  that  no  purge  can  now  be 
taken  between  the  Weser  and  the  Garonne ;  that  the  bustling 
pestle  is  still,  the  canorous  mortar  mute,  and  the  bowels  of  mankind 
locked  up  for  fourteen  degrees  of  latitude !  When,  I  should  be 
curious  to  know,  were  all  the  powers  of  crudity  and  flatulence 
fully  explained  to  his  majesty's  ministers?  At  what  period  was 
this  great  plan  of  conquest  and  constipation  fully  developed  ?  In 
whose  mind  was  the  idea  of  destroying  the  pride  and  the  plasters 
of  France  first  engendered  ?     Without  castor  oil  they  miglit,  for 


BOURBON   AND   BOLUS.  313 

some  months,  to  be  sure,  have  carried  on  a  lingering  war ;  but  can 
they  do  without  bark  ?  Will  the  people  live  under  a  government 
where  antimonial  powders  cannot  be  procured  ?  Will  they  bear 
the  loss  of  mercury  ?  "  There's  the  rub."  Depend  upon  it,  the 
absence  of  the  materia  medica  will  soon  bring  them  to  their  senses, 
and  the  cry  of  Bourhon  and  bolus  burst  forth  from  the  Baltic  to 
the  Mediterranean.* 

*  Napier,  in  his  History  of  the  "War  in  the  Peninsula  (book  xiv.)  says 
of  Perceval's  administration:  "Narrow,  harsh,  factious,  and  illiberal,  in 
evei-j'thing  relating  to  public  matters,  this  man's  career  was  one  of  unmixed 
evil.  His  bigotry  taught  him  to  oppress  Ireland,  but  his  religion  did  not  de- 
ter him  from  passing  a  law  to  prevent  the  introduction  of  medicines  into 
France  during  a  pestilence."  A  further  discussion  of  Perceval's  "  Jesuit's 
Bark  Bill,"  with  citations  of  contemporary  orators  and  writers  —  strengthen- 
ing Smith's  attack  —  will  be  found  among  Napier's  appendices. 

14 


814  AN  APOLOGUE 


REFORM  SPEECHES. 


A   COUNTRY  PROSPEROUS   IN    SPITE    OF  POLITICAL   EVILS.* 

Thet  tell  you,  gentlemen,  that  you  have  grown  rich  and  power- 
ful with  these  rotten  boroughs,  and  that  it  would  be  madness  to 
part  with  them,  or  to  alter  a  constitution  which  had  produced  such 
happy  effects.  There  happens,  gentlemen,  to  live  near  my  par- 
sonage, a  labouring  man  of  very  superior  character  and  under- 
standing to  his  fellow-labourers  ;  and  who  has  made  such  good  use 
of  that  superiori!-y,  that  he  has  saved  what  is  (for  his  station  in  life) 
a  very  considerable  sum  of  money,  and  if  his  existence  is  extended 
to  the  common  period,  he  will  die  rich.  It  happens,  however,  that 
he  is  (and  long  has  been)  troubled  with  violent  stomachic  pains, 
for  which  he  has  hitherto  obtained  no  relief,  and  which  really  are 
the  bane  and  torment  of  his  life.  Now,  if  my  excellent  labourer 
were  to  send  for  a  physician,  and  to  consult  him  respecting  tliis 
malady,  would  it  not  be  very  singular  language  if  our  doctor  were 
to  say  to  him,  "  My  good  friend,  you  surely  will  not  be  so  rash  as 
to  attempt  to  get  rid  of  these  pains  in  your  stomach.  Have  you 
not  grown  rich  with  these  pains  in  your  stomach  ?  have  not  you  risen 
under  them  from  poverty  to  prosperity  ?  has  not  your  situation, 
since  you  were  fii'st  attacked,  been  improving  every  year  ?  You 
surely  will  not  be  so  foolish  and  so  indiscreet  as  to  part  with  the  pains 
in  your  stomach  ?" — Wliy,  what  would  be  the  answer  of  the  rustic 
to  this  nonsensical  monition  ?  "  Monster  of  rhubarb !"  he  would  say, 
"  I  am  not  rich  in  consequence  of  the  pains  in  my  stomach,  but  in 
spite  of  the  pains  in  my  stomach  ;  and  I  should  have  been  ten  times 
richer,  and  fifty  times  happier,  if  I  had  never  had  any  pains  in  my 

*  From  a  speech  on  the  Reform  Bill,  at  Taunton. 


REFORM.  315 

Btomach  at  all."  Gentlemen,  these  rotten  boroughs  are  your  pains 
in  the  stomach  —  and  you  would  have  been  a  much  richer  and 
greater  people  if  you  had  never  had  them  at  all.  Your  wealth  and 
your  power  have  been  owing,  not  to  the  debased  and  corrupted 
parts  of  the  House  of  Commons,  but  to  the  many  independent  and 
honourable  members  whom  it  has  always  contained  Avithin  its 
walls.  If  there  had  been  a  few  more  of  these  very  valuable  mem- 
bers for  close  boroughs,  we  should,  I  verily  believe,  have  been  by 
this  time  about  as  free  as  Denmark,  Sweden,  or  the  Germanized 
states  of  Italy. 


SPEECH    AT    TAUNTON.* 

Mr.  Bailiff,  I  have  spoken  so  often  on  this  subject,  that  I  am 
sure  both  you  and  the  gentlemen  here  present  will  be  obliged  to 
me  for  saying  but  little,  and  that  favour  I  am  as  willing  to  confer 
as  you  can  be  to  receive  it.  I  feel  most  deeply  the  event  which 
has  taken  place,  because,  by  putting  the  two  houses  of  Parliament 
in  collision  Avith  each  other,  it  will  impede  the  pubhc  business,  and 
diminish  the  public  prosperity.  I  feel  it  as  a  churchman,  because 
I  cannot  but  blush  to  see  so  many  dignitaries  of  the  church  arrayed 
against  the  wishes  and  happiness  of  the  people.  I  feel  it  more 
than  all,  because  I  believe  it  will  sow  the  seeds  of  deadly  hatred 
between  the  aristocracy  and  the  great  mass  of  the  people.  The 
loss  of  the  bill  I  do  not  feel,  and  for  the  best  of  all  possible  reasons 
— because  I  have  not  the  slightest  idea  that  it  is  lost.  I  have  no 
more  doubt,  before  the  expiration  of  the  winter,  that  this  bill  will 
pass,  than  I  have  that  the  annual  tax  bills  will  pass,  and  greater 
certainty  than  this  no  man  can  have,  for  Franklin  tells  us  there 
are  but  two  things  certain  in  this  world  —  death  and  taxes.  As 
for  the  possibility  of  the  House  of  Loi'ds  preventing,  ere  long,  a 
reform  of  Parliament,  I  hold  it  to  be  the  most  absurd  notion  that 
ever  entered  into  human  imagination.  I  do  not  mean  to  be  dis- 
respectful, but  the  attempt  of  the  lords  to  stop  the  progress  of  re- 
form, reminds  me  very  forcibly  of  the  great  storm  of  Sidmouth, 
and  of  the  conduct  of  the  excellent  Mrs.  Partington  on  that  occa- 
sion. In'the  winter  of  1824,  there  set  in  a  great  flood  upon  that 
town  —  the  tide  rose  to  an  incredible  height — the  waves  rushed  in 
*  Reported  in  the  Tauntoa  Courier,  Oct.  12,  1831. 


316  MRS.    PARTINGTON. 

upon  the  houses,  and  everything  was  threatened  with  destruction. 
In  the  midst  of  this  sublime  and  terrible  storm,  Dame  Partington, 
who  lived  upon  the  beach,  was  seen  at  the  door  of  her  house,  with 
mop  and  pattens,  trundling  her  mop,  squeezing  out  the  sea-water, 
and  vio'ourouslj  pushing  away  the  Atlantic  ocean.  The  Atlantic 
was  roused.  Mrs.  Partington's  spirit  was  up  ;  but  I  need  not  tell 
you  that  the  contest  was  unequal.  The  Atlantic  Ocean  beat  Mrs. 
Partington.  She  was  excellent  at  a  slop,  or  a  puddle,  but  she 
should  not  have  meddled  with  a  tempest.  Gentlemen,  be  at  your 
ease  —  be  quiet  and  steady.     You  will  beat  Mrs.  Partington.* 

They  tell  you,  gentlemen,  in  the  debates  by  which  we  have  been 
lately  occupied,  that  the  bill  is  not  justified  by  experience.  I  do 
not  think  this  true,  but  if  it  were  true,  nations  are  sometimes  com- 
pelled to  act  without  experience  for  their  guide,  and  to  trust  to 
their  own  sagacity  for  the  anticipation  of  consequences.  The  in- 
stances where  this  country  has  been  compelled  thus  to  act  have 
been  so  eminently  successful,  that  I  see  no  cause  for  fear,  even  if 
we  were  acting  in  the  manner  imputed  to  us  by  our  enemies.  What 
precedents  and  what  experience  were  there  at  the  Reformation, 
when  the  country,  with  one  unanimous  effort,  pushed  out  the  Pope, 
and  his  grasping  and  ambitious  clergy? — What  experience,  when, 
at  the  Revolution,  we  di-ove  away  our  ancient  race  of  kings,  and 

*  Did  Sydney  Smith  invent  Mrs.  Partington  ?  A  communication  in  Notes 
and  Queries  (Nov.  16,  18.50),  may  seem  to  establish  Mrs.  Partington  as  a 
real  personage,  but  the  evidence  is  not  conclusive.  The  writer  says,  the  ori- 
ginal Mrs.  P.  was  a  respectable  old  lady,  living  at  Sidmouth,  in  Devon- 
shire, and  her  encounter  with  the  ocean,  when  mop  and  broom  failed,  and  she 
was  driven  to  take  refuge  in  the  second  story  of  her  cottage  on  the  beach,  oc- 
curred, to  the  best  of  his  recollection,  daring  an  awful  stonn  in  November, 
1824,  when  some  tifty  or  sixty  ships  were  lost  at  Plymouth.  He  well  recol- 
lects, he  adds,  reading  in  the  Devonshire  newspapers  of  the  time,  an  account 
of  Mrs.  Partington ;  but  he  may  have  read  only  Smith's  speech,  which  he 
wrongly  ascribes  to  Lord  Brougham. 

Mrs.  Partington  has  acquired  additional  celebrity  by  the  pleasant  sayings  in 
the  vein  of  Mrs.  Malaprop,  which  have  been  widely  scattered  over  the  world, 
in  the  newspapers.  This  peculiar  pleasantry,  a  humourous  dislocation  of  the 
English  language,  with  grotesque  associations  of  ideas,  has  had  various  imi- 
tators ;  but  the  original  American  Mrs.  Partington  owes  her  graces  to  Mr.  B. 
P.  Shillaber,  for  several  years  associated  with  the  Boston  Post,  in  which  the 
genuine  sayings  are  recorded.  They  were  collected  into  a  volume  in  1854, 
with  the  title,  "  The  Life  and  Sayings  of  Mrs.  Partington,  and  others  of  the 
Family." 


IGNOEANCE   OF  THE   COUNTRY.  317 

chose  another  family  more  congenial  to  our  free  princij^les  ?  —  And 
yet  to  those  two  events,  contrary  to  experience,  and  unguided  by 
precedents,  we  owe  all  our  domestic  happiness,  and  civil  and  re- 
ligious freedom — and  having  got  rid  of  corrupt  priests  and  despot- 
ic kings,  by  our  sense  and  our  courage,  are  we  now  to  be  intimi- 
dated by  the  awful  danger  of  extinguishing  boroughmongers,  and 
shaking  from  our  necks  the  ignominious  yoke  which  their  baseness 
has  imposed  upon  it?  Go  on,  they  say,  as  you  have  done  for 
these  hundred  years  last  past.  I  answer,  it  is  impossible — five 
hundred  people  now  write  and  read  where  one  hundred  wrote  and 
read  fifty  years  ago.  The  iniquities  and  enormities  of  the  borough 
system  are  now  known  to  the  meanest  of  the  people.  You  have  a 
different  sort  of  men  to  deal  with — you  must  change,  because  the 
beings  whom  you  govern  are  changed.  After  all,  and  to  be  short, 
I  must  say,  that  it  has  always  appeared  to  me  to  be  the  most  abso- 
lute nonsense,  that  we  cannot  be  a  great,  or  a  rich  and  happy  nation, 
without  suffering  ourselves  to  be  bought  and  sold  every  five  years, 
like  a  pack  of  negro-slaves.  I  lioj)e  I  am  not  a  very  rash  man, 
but  I  would  launch  boldly  into  this  experiment  without  any  fear 
of  consequences,  and  I  believe  there  is  not  a  man  here  present 
who  would  not  cheerfully  embark  with  me.  As  to  the  enemies  of 
the  bill,  who  pretend  to  be  reformers,  I  know  them,  I  believe,  bet- 
ter than  you  do,  and  I  earnestly  caution  you  against  them.  You 
will  have  no  more  of  reform  than  they  are  compelled  to  grant  — 
you  will  have  no  reform  at  all,  if  they  can  avoid  it — you  will  be 
hurried  into  a  war  to  turn  your  attention  from  reform.  They  do 
not  understand  you — they  will  not  believe  in  the  improvement 
you  have  made  —  they  think  the  English  of  the  present  day  are  as 
the  English  of  the  times  of  Queen  Anne  or  George  the  First.  They 
know  no  more  of  the  present  state  of  their  own  country,  than  of  the 
state  of  the  Esquimaux  Indians.  Gentlemen,  I  view  the  ignorance 
of  the  present  state  of  the  country  with  the  most  serious  concern,  and 
I  believe  they  will  one  day  or  another  waken  into  conviction  with 
horror  and  dismay.  I  will  omit  no  means  of  rousing  them  to  a 
sense  of  their  danger ;  for  this  object  I  cheerfully  sign  the  petition 
proposed  by  Dr.  Kinglake,  which  I  consider  to  be  the  wisest  and 
most  moderate  of  the  two. 


318  THE  BOROUGH  SYSTEM. 

SPEECH    ON    THE    REFORM    BILL. 

Stick  to  the  Bill — it  is  your  Magna  Charta,  and  your  Runny- 
mede.  King  John  made  a  present  to  the  barons.  King  WilliETm 
has  made  a  similar  present  to  you.  Never  mind,  common  qualities 
good  in  common  times.  If  a  man  does  not  vote  for  the  Bill,  he  is 
unclean  —  the  plague-spot  is  upon  him  —  push  him  into  the  Laza- 
retto of  the  last  century,  with  Wetherell  and  Sadler — purify  the 
air  before  you  approach  him — bathe  your  hands  in  chloride  of 
lime,  if  you  have  been  contaminated  by  his  touch. 

So  far  from  its  being  a  merely  theoretical  improvement,  I  put  it 
to  any  man,  who  is  himself  embarked  in  a  profession,  or  has  sons 
in  the  same  situation,  if  the  unfair  influence  of  boroughmongers 
has  not  perpetually  thwarted  him  in  his  lawful  career  of  ambition, 
and  professional  emolument  ?  "I  have  been  in  three  general  en- 
gagements at  sea,"  said  an  old  sailor,  "  have  been  twice  wounded  : 
I  commanded  the  boats  when  the  French  frigate,  the  Astrolabe, 
was  cut  out  so  gallantly."  "  Then  you  are  made  a  post-captain  ?" 
"No  ;  I  was  very  near  it,  but — Lieutenant  Thomson  cut  me  out,  as 
I  cut  out  the  French  frigate  ;  his  father  is  townclerk  of  the  borough, 
for  which  Lord  F is  member,  and  there  my  chance  was  fin- 
ished." In  the  same  manner,  all  over  England,  you  will  find  great 
scholars  rotting  on  curacies — brave  captains  starving  in  garrets  — 
profound  lawyers  decayed  and  mouldering  in  the  Inns  of  Court, 
because  the  parsons,  warriors,  and  advocates,  of  boroughmongers, 
must  be  crammed  to  saturation,  before  there  is  a  morsel  of  bread 
for  the  man  who  does  not  sell  his  votes,  and  put  his  country  up  at 
auction ;  and  though  this  is  of  every-day  occurrence,  the  borough 
system,  we  are  told,  is  no  practical  evil. 

Who  can  bear  to  walk  tlirough  a  slaughterhouse  ?  blood,  gar- 
bage, stomachs,  entrails,  legs,  tails,  kidneys,  horrors — I  often  walk 
a  mile  about  to  avoid  it.  "What  a  scene  of  disgust  and  horror  is 
an  election  —  the  base  and  infamous  traffic  of  principles  —  a  candi- 
date of  high  character  reduced  to  such  means  —  the  perjury  and 
evasion  of  agents — the  detestable  rapacity  of  voters — the  ten 
days'  dominion,  of  mammon,  and  Beliah  The  Bill  lessens  it — 
begins  the  destruction  of  such  practices  —  affords  some  chance,  and 
eome  means  of  turning  public  opinion  against  bribery,  and  of  ren- 
dering it  infamous. 


TELLU5I   ASD   PLUIIPKIN.  319 

But  the  thing  I  cannot,  and  will  not  bear,  is  this ;  what  right 
has  this  lord  or  that  marquis  to  buy  ten  seats  in  Parliament,  in 
the  shape  of  boroughs,  and  then  to  make  laws  to  govern  me  ? 
And  how  are  these  masses  of  power  re-distributed  ?  The  eldest 
son  of  my  lord  is  just  come  from  Eton  —  he  knows  a  good  deal 
about  ^neas,  and  Dido,  Apollo,  and  Daphne — and  that  is  all 
and  to  this  boy,  his  father  gives  a  six-hundredth  part  of  the  power 
of  malcing  laws,  as  he  would  give  him  a  horse,  or  a  double-barrelled 
gun.  Then  Vellum,  the  stewai'd,  is  put  in  —  an  admirable  man  ; 
he  has  raised  the  estates,  watched  the  progress  of  the  family  road, 
and  canal  bills  —  and  Vellum  shall  help  to  rule  over  the  people  of 
Israel.  A  neighbouring  country  gentleman,  Mr.  Plumpkin,  hunts 
with  my  lord — opens  him  a  gate  or  two,  while  the  hounds  are 
running — dines  with  my  lord — agrees  with  my  lord — wishes  he 
could  rival  the  Southdown  sheep  of  my  lord — and  upon  Plumpkin 
is  conferred  a  portion  of  the  government.  Then  there  is  a  distant 
relation  of  the  same  name,  in  the  county  militia,  with  white  teeth, 
who  calls  up  the  carriage  at  the  opera,  and  is  always  wishing  O'Con- 
nell  was  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered ;  then  a  barrister,  who  has 
written  an  article  in  the  Quarterly,  and  is  very  likely  to  speak  and 
refute  M'CuUoch ;  and  these  five  people,  in  whose  nomination  I 
have  no  more  agency  than  I  have  in  the  nomination  of  the  toll- 
keepers  of  the  Bosphorus,  are  to  make  laws  for  me  and  my  family 
— to  put  their  hands  in  my  purse,  and  to  sway  the  future  destinies 
of  this  country ;  and  when  the  neighbors  step  in,  and  beg  permis- 
sion to  say  a  few  words  before  these  persons  are  chosen,  there  is 
a  universal  cry  of  ruin,  confusion,  and  destruction ;  we  have  be- 
come a  great  people  under  Vellum  and  Plumpkin — under  Vel- 
lum and  Plumpkin  our  ships  have  covered  the  ocean — under 
Vellum  and  Plumpkin  our  armies  have  secured  the  strength  of 
the  hills  —  to  turn  out  Vellum  and  Plumpkin  is  not  reform,  but 
revolution. 

Was  there  ever  such  a  ministry?  "Was  there  ever  before  a 
real  ministry  of  the  people  ?  Look  at  the  condition  of  the  country 
when  it  was  placed  in  their  hands :  the  state  of  the  house  Avhen 
the  incoming  tenant  took  possession :  windows  broken,  chimneys 
on  fire,  mobs  round  the  house  threatening  to  pull  it  down,  roof 
tumbling,  rain  pouring  in.  It  was  courage  to  occupy  it ;  it  was  a 
miracle  to  save  it ;  it  will  be  the  glory  of  glories  to  enlarge  and 


320  BKOUGHAM   AND   THE   COUET   OF   CHANCERY. 

expand  it,  and  to  make  it  the  eternal  palace  of  wise  and  temperate 
freedom. 

Proper  examples  have  been  made  among  the  unhappy  and  mis- 
guided disciples  of  Swing :  a  rope  has  been  carried  round  O'Con- 
nell's  legs,  and  a  ring  inserted  in  Cobbett's  nose.  Then  the  game 
laws !  Was  ever  conduct  so  shabby  as  that  of  the  two  or  tlii-ee 
governments  which  preceded  that  of  Lord  Grey  ?  The  cruelties 
and  enormities  of  this  code  had  been  thoroughly  exposed ;  and  a 
general  conviction  existed  of  the  necessity  of  a  change.  Bills  were 
brought  in  by  various  gentlemen,  containing  some  trifling  altera- 
tion in  this  abominable  code,  and  even  these  were  sacrificed  to  the 
tricks  and  manoeuvres  of  some  noble  Nimrod,  who  availed  himself 
of  the  emptiness  of  the  town  in  July,  and  flung  out  the  Bill.  Gov- 
ernment never  stirred  a  step.  The  fullness  of  the  prisons,  the 
wretchedness  and  demoralization  of  the  poor,  never  came  across 
them.  The  humane  and  considerate  Peel  never  once  offered  to 
extend  his  aegis  over  them.  It  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  state 
of  party ;  and  some  of  their  double-barrelled  voters  might  be  of- 
fended. In  the  meantime,  for  every  ten  pheasants  which  fluttered 
in  the  wood,  one  English  peasant  was  rotting  in  jail.  No  sooner 
is  Lord  Althorp  chancellor  of  the  exchequer,  than  he  turns  out  of 
the  house  a  trumpery  and  (perhaps)  an  insidious  bill  for  the  im- 
provement of  the  game  laws ;  and  in  an  instant  offers  the  assist- 
ance of  government  for  the  abolition  of  the  whole  code. 

Then  look  at  the  gigantic  Brougham,  sworn  in  at  twelve  o'clock, 
and  before  six,  has  a  bill  on  the  table  abolishing  the  abuses  of  a  court 
which  has  been  the  curse  of  the  people  of  England  for  centuries. 
For  twenty-five  long  years  did  Lord  Eldon  sit  in  that  court,  sur- 
rounded with  misery  and  sorrow,  which  he  never  held  up  a  finger 
to  alleviate.  The  widow  and  the  orphan  cried  to  him  as  vainly 
as  the  toAvn-crier  cries  when  he  offers  a  small  reward  for  a  full 
purse ;  the  bankrupt  of  the  court  became  the  lunatic  of  the  court ; 
estates  mouldered  away,  and  mansions  fell  down ;  but  the  fees 
came  in,  and  all  was  well.  But  in  an  instant  the  iron  mace  of 
Brougham  shivered  to  atoms  this  house  of  fraud  and  of  delay ; 
and  this  is  the  man  who  will  help  to  govern  you ;  who  bottoms  his 
reputation  on  doing  good  to  you ;  who  knows,  that  to  reform 
abuses  is  the  safest  basis  of  fame  and  the  surest  instrument  of 
nower;   who   uses   the   highest   gifls   of    reason,   and   the    mos- 


EARL  GREY.  321 

pplendid  efforts  of  genius,  to  rectify  those  abuses,  which  all 
the  genius  and  talent  of  the  profession*  have  hitherto  been 
employed  to  justify,  and  to  protect.  Look  to  Brougham,  and 
turn  you  to  that  side  where  he  waves  his  long  and  lean  finger,  and 
mark  well  that  face  which  nature  has  marked  so  forcibly  — 
which  dissolves  pensions  —  turns  jobbers  into  honest  men — scares 
away  the  plundei-er  of  the  public — and  is  a  terror  to  him  who 
doeth  evil  to  the  people.  But,  above  all,  look  to  the  northern 
Earl,t  victim,  before  this  honest  and  manly  reign,  of  the  spiteful- 
ness  of  the  court.  You  may  now,  for  the  first  time,  learn  to  trust 
in  the  professions  of  a  minister ;  you  are  directed  by  a  man  who 
prefers  character  to  place,  and  who  has  given  such  unequivocal 
proofs  of  honesty  and  patriotism,  that  his  image  ought  to  be 
amongst  your  household  gods,  and  his  name  to  be  lisped  by  your 
children ;  two  thousand  years  hence  it  will  be  a  legend  like  the 
fable  of  Perseus  and  Andi-omeda ;  Britannia  chained  to  a  moun- 
tain— two  hundred  rotten  animals  menacing  her  destruction,  till  a 
tall  Earl,  armed  with  schedule  A.,  and  followed  by  his  page  Rus- 
sell, di-ives  them  into  the  deep,  and  delivers  over  Britannia  in 
safety  to  crowds  of  ten-pound  renters,  who  deafen  the  au*  with 
their  acclamations.  Forthwith,  Latin  verses  upon  this — school 
exercises — boys  whipped,  and  all  the  usual  absurdities  of  education. 
Don't  part  with  an  administration  composed  of  Lord  Grey  and 
Lord  Brougham;  and  not  only  these,  but  look  at  them  all — the 
mild  wisdom  of  Lansdowne — the  genius  and  extensive  knowl- 
edge of  Holland,  in  whose  bold  and  honest  life  there  is  no  vary- 
ing nor  shadow  of  change — the  unexpected  and  exemplary  activity 
of  Lord  Melbourne  —  and  the  rising  parhamentary  talents  of 
Stanley.  You  are  ignorant  of  your  best  interests,  if  every  vote 
you  can  bestow  is  not  given  to  such  a  ministry  as  this. 

You  will  soon  find  an  alteration  of  behaviour  in  the  upper 
orders  when  elections  become  real.  You  will  find  that  you  are 
raised  to  the  importance  to  which  you  ought  to  be  raised.  The 
merciless  ejector,  the  rural  tyrant,  will  be  restrained  within  the 
limits  of  decency  and  humanity,  and  will  improve  their  own  char- 
acters at  the  same  time  that  they  better  your  condition. 

*  Lord  Ljhdhurst  is  an  exception ;  I  firmh'  believe  he  had  nr  w-ish  to  per 
pctuate  the  abuses  of  the  Court  of  Chancery.  —  Author's  Note 
t  Lord  Grey. 

U* 


322  KING   WILLIAM   AND   THE  EEVOLUTION. 

It  is  not  tlie  power  of  aristocracy  that  will  be  destroyed  by 
these  measures,  but  the  unfair  power.  If  the  Duke  of  Newcastle 
is  kind  and  obliging  to  his  neighbours,  he  will  probably  lead  his 
neighbours ;  if  ho  is  a  man  of  sense,  he  will  lead  them  more  cer- 
tainly, and  to  a  better  purpose.  All  tliis  is  as  it  should  be ;  but  the 
Duke  of  Newcastle,  at  present,  by  buying  certain  old  houses, 
could  govern  his  neighbours  and  legislate  for  them,  even  if  he  had 
not  five  grains  of  understanding,  and  if  he  were  the  most  churlish 
and  brutal  man  under  heaven.  The  present  state  of  things  renders 
unnecessary  all  those  important  virtues,  which  rich  and  well-bom 
men,  under  a  better  system,  would  exercise  for  the  public  good. 
The  Duke  of  Newcastle  (I  mention  him  only  as  an  instance), 
Lord  Exeter  will  do  as  well,  but  either  of  those  noblemen,  de- 
pending not  upon  walls,  arches,  and  abutments,  for  their  power — 
but  upon  mercy,  charity,  forbearance,  indulgence,  and  example  — 
would  pay  this  price,  and  lead  the  people  by  their  affections ;  one 
would  be  the  god  of  Stamford,  and  the  other  of  Newai-k.  This 
union  of  the  great  with  the  many  is  the  real  healthy  state  of  a 
country ;  such  a  country  is  strong  to  invincibility  —  and  this 
strength  the  borough  system  entirely  destroys. 

Cant  words  creep  in,  and  affect  quarrels  ;  the  changes  are  rung 
between  revolution  and  reform ;  but,  first  settle  whether  a  wise 
government  ought  to  attempt  the  measure — whether  anything  is 
wanted — whether  less  would  do — and,  having  settled  this,  mere 
nomenclature  becomes  of  very  Uttle  consequence.  But,  after  all, 
if  it  is  revolution,  and  not  reform,  it  will  only  induce  me  to  receive 
an  old  political  toast  in  a  twofold  meaning,  and  with  twofold 
pleasure.  When  King  Wilham  and  the  great  and  glorious  Rev- 
olution are  given,  I  shall  think  not  only  of  escape  fi-om  bigoti*y, 
but  exemption  from  corruption ;  and  I  shall  thank  Providence, 
which  has  given  us  a  second  King  William  for  the  destruction  of 
vice,  as  the  other,  of  that  name,  was  given  us  for  the  conservation 
of  freedom. 

All  formal  political  changes,  proposed  by  these  very  men,  it  is 
said,  were  mild  and  gentle,  compared  to  this ;  true,  but  are  you  on 
Saturday  night  to  seize  your  apothecary  by  the  throat  and  to 
say  to  him,  "  Subtle  compounder,  fraudulent  posologist,  did  not 
you  order  me  a  drachm  of  this  medicine  on  Monday  morning,  and 
now  you  declare  that  nothing  short  of  an  ounce  can  do  me  any 


HEPTARCHY  OP  THE  PEESS.  323 

good  ?"  "  True  enough,"  would  he  of  the  vials  reply,  "  hut  you 
did  not  take  the  drachm  on  Monday  viorniag — that  makes  all  the 
difference,  my  dear  sir ;  if  you  had  done  as  I  advised  you  at  first, 
the  small  quantity  of  medicine  would  have  sufficed ;  and  instead 
of  being  in  a  night-gown  and  slippers  up-stairs,  you  would  have 
been  walking  vigourously  in  Piccadilly.  Do  as  you  please — and 
die  if  you  please  ;  but  don't  blame  me  because  you  despised  my 
advice,  and  by  your  own  ignorance  and  obstinacy  have  entailed 
upon  yourself  tenfold  rhubarb  and  unlimited  infusion  of  senna." 

Now  see  the  consequences  of  having  a  manly  leader,  and 
a  manly  Cabinet.  Suppose  they  had  come  out  with  a  little  ill- 
fashioned  seven  months'  reform  ;  Avhat  would  have  been  the  conse- 
quence? The  same  opposition  from  the  Toi'ies  —  that  would  have 
been  quite  certain — and  not  a  single  Reformer  in  England  satis- 
fied Avitli  the  measure.  You  have  now  a  real  Reform,  and  a  fair 
share  of  power  delegated  to  the  people. 

The  Anti- Reformers  cite  the  increased  power  of  the  press  — 
this  is  the  very  reason  why  I  want  an  increased  power  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  Times,  Herald,  Advertiser,  Globe, 
Sun,  Courier,  and  Clu-onicle,  are  a  heptarchy  which  governs  this 
country,  and  governs  it  because  the  people  are  so  badly  repre- 
sented. I  am  perfectly  satisfied,  that  with  a  fair  and  honest  House 
of  Commons  the  power  of  the  press  would  diminish — and  that 
the  greatest  authority  Avould  centre  in  the  highest  place. 

Is  it  possible  for  a  gentleman  to  get  into  Parliament,  at  px'esent, 
without  doing  things  he  is  utterl}^  ashamed  of — without  mixing 
himself  up  with  the  lowest  and  basest  of  mankind  ?  Hands  accus- 
tomed to  the  scented  lubncity  of  soap,  are  defiled  with  pitch,  and 
contaminated  with  filth.  Is  there  not  some  inherent  vice  in  a 
Government,  which  cannot  be  carried  on  but  with  such  abominable 
wickedness,  in  which  no  gentleman  can  mingle  without  moral 
degradation,  and  the  practice  of  crimes,  the  very  imputation  of 
which,  on  other  occasions,  he  would  repel  at  the  hazard  of  his  life? 

What  signifies  a  small  majority  in  the  House  ?  The  miracle  is, 
that  there  should  have  been  any  majority  at  all ;  that  there  was 
not  an  immense  majority  on  the  other  side.  It  was  a  very  long 
period  before  the  courts  of  justice  in  Jersey  could  put  down  smug- 
gling, and  why  ?  The  judges,  counsel,  attorneys,  crier  of  the 
"Avci,  grand   and   petty  jurymen,  were  all   smugglers,  and  the 


324  THE   NEW   REPRESENTATIVES. 

higli-slieriff  and  constables  were  running  goods  every  moonlight 
night. 

How  are  you  to  do  without  a  government  ?  And  what  other 
government,  if  this  Bill  be  ultimately  lost,  could  possibly  be  found  ? 
How  could  any  country  defray  the  ruinous  expense  of  protecthig^ 
with  troops  and  constables,  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  who  literally  would  not  be  able  to  walk  from  the 
Horse-Guards  to  Grosvenor  Square,  without  two  or  three  regi- 
ments of  foot  to  screen  them  from  the  mob ;  and  in  these  hollow 
squares  the  Hero  of  Waterloo  would  have  to  spend  his  political 
life  ?  By  the  whole  exercise  of  his  splendid  military  talents,  by 
strong  batteries,  at  Boodle's  and  White's,  he  might,  on  nights  of 
great  debate,  reach  the  House  of  Lords ;  but  Sir  Robert  would, 
probably,  be  cut  off,  and  nothing  could  save  Twiss  and  Lewis. 

The  great  majority  of  pei'sons  returned  by  the  new  Boroughs 
would  either  be  men  of  high  reputation  for  talents,  or  persons  of  for- 
tune known  in  the  neighbourhood ;  they  have  property  and  character 
to  lose.  Why  are  they  to  plunge  into  mad  revolutionary  projects 
of  pillaging  the  public  creditor  ?  It  is  not  the  interest  of  any  such 
man  to  do  it ;  he  would  lose  more  by  the  destruction  of  public 
credit  than  he  would  gain  by  a  remission  of  what  he  paid  for 
the  interest  of  the  public  debt.  And  if  it  is  not  the  interest  of 
any  one  to  act  in  this  manner,  it  is  not  the  interest  of  the  mass. 
Plow  many,  also,  of  these  new  legislators  would  there  be,  who 
were  not  themselves  creditors  of  the  state  ?  Is  it  the  interest  of 
such  men  to  create  a  revolution,  by  destroying  the  constitutional 
power  of  the  House  of  Lords,  or  of  the  king  ?  Does  there  exist 
in  persons  of  that  class,  any  disposition  for  sucli  changes  ?  Are  not 
all  their  feelings,  and  opinions,  and  prejudices,  on  the  opposite  side  ? 
The  majority  of  the  new  members  will  be  landed  gentlemen  :  their 
genus  is  utterly  distinct  from  the  revolutionary  tribe ;  they  have 
molar  teeth ;  they  are  destitute  of  the  carnivorous  and  incisive 
jaws  of  political  adventurers. 

There  Avill  be  mistakes  at  first,  as  there  are  in  all  changes.  All 
young  ladies  will  imagine  (as  soon  as  this  bill  is  carried)  that  they 
will  be  instantly  married.  Schoolboys  believe  that  gerunds  and 
supines  will  be  abolished,  and  that  currant  tarts  must  uUimately 
come  down  in  price ;  the  corporal  and  sergeant  are  sure  of  double 
pay ;  bad  poets  will  expect  a  demand  for  their  epics ;  fools  wiP  bf' 


BENEFITS   OP  EEFORM.  325 

disappointed,  as  tliey  always  are  ;  reasonable  men,  who  know  what 
to  expect,  will  find  that  a  very  serious  good  has  been  obtained. 

What  good  to  the  hewer  of  wood  and  the  drawer  of  water  ? 
How  is  he  benefited,  if  Old  Sarum  is  abolished,  and  Birmingliam 
members  created  ?  ]3ut  if  you  ask  this  question  of  reform,  you 
must  ask  it  of  a  great  number  of  other  great  measures.  How  is  he 
benefited  by  Catholic  emancipation,  by  the  repeal  of  the  Corpora- 
tion and  Test  Act,  by  the  Eevolution  of  1G88,  by  any  great  politi- 
cal change  ?  by  a  good  government  ?  In  the  first  place,  if  many 
are  benefited,  and  the  lower  orders  are  not  injured,  this  alone  is 
reason  enough  for  the  change.  But  the  hewer  of  wood  and  the 
drawer  of  water  are  benefited  by  reform.  Reform  will  produce 
economy  and  investigation ;  there  will  be  fewer  jobs,  and  a  less 
lavish  expenditure ;  Avars  will  not  be  persevered  in  for  years  after 
the  people  are  tired  of  them ;  taxes  will  be  taken  off  the  poor  and 
laid  upon  the  rich :  demotic  habits  will  be  more  common  in  a 
country  where  the  rich  are  forced  to  court  the  poor  for  political 
power ;  cruel  and  oppressive  punishments  (such  as  those  for  night 
poaching)  will  be  abolished.  If  you  steal  a  pheasant,  you  Avill  be 
punished  as  you  ought  to  be,  but  not  sent  away  from  your  wife  and 
children  for  seven  years.  Tobacco  will  be  two  pence  per  pound 
cheaper.  Candles  will  foil  in  price.  These  last  results  of  an 
improved  government  will  be  felt.  We  do  not  pretend  to  abolish 
poverty,  or  to  prevent  wretchedness ;  but  if  peace,  economy,  and 
justice,  are  the  I'esults  of  reform,  a  number  of  small  benefits,  or 
rather  of  benefits  which  ajjpear  small  to  us  but  not  to  them,  will 
accrue  to  millions  of  the  people ;  and  the  connection  between  the 
existence  of  John  Russell,  and  the  reduced  price  of  bread  and 
cheese,  will  be  as  clear  as  it  has  been  the  object  of  his  honest, 
wise,  and  useful  life  to  make  it. 

Don't  be  led  away  by  such  nonsense ;  all  things  are  dearer 
under  a  bad  government,  and  cheaper  under  a  good  one.  The 
real  question  they  ask  you  is.  What  difference  can  any  change  of 
government  make  to  you?  They  want  to  keep  the  bees  from 
buzzing  and  stinging,  in  order  that  they  may  rob  the  hive  in 
peace. 

Wort  well !  How  does  it  work  well,  when  every  human  being  in 
doors  and  out  (with  the  exception  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington)  says  it 
must  be  made  to  work  better,  or  it  will  soon  cease  to  work  at  all? 


32o  MODES  OF  REFORM. 

It  is  little  short  of  absolute  nonsense  to  call  a  govei-nment  good, 
which  the  great  mass  of  Englishmen  would  before  twenty  years 
were  elapsed,  if  reform  were  denied,  rise  up  and  destroy.  Of  what 
use  have  all  the  cruel  laws  been  of  Perceval,  Eldon,  and  Castle- 
reagh,  to  extinguish  reform  ?  Lord  John  Russell  and  his  abettors, 
would  have  been  committed  to  jail  twenty  years  ago  for  half  only  of 
his  present  reform ;  and  now  relays  of  the  people  would  drag  them 
from  London  to  Edinburgh ;  at  which  latter  city  we  are  told  by 
Mr.  Dundas,  that  there  is  no  eagerness  for  reform.  Five  minutes 
before  Moses  struck  the  rock,  this  gentleman  would  have  said  that 
there  was  no  eagerness  for  water. 

There  are  two  methods  of  making  alterations ;  the  one  is  to 
despise  the  applicants,  to  begin  with  refusing  every  concession, 
then  to  relax  to  making  concessions  which  are  always  too  late;  by 
offering  in  1831  what  is  then  too  late,  but  would  have  been  cheer- 
fully accepted  in  1830 — gradually  to  O'Connellize  the  country, 
till  at  last,  after  this  process  has  gone  on  for  some  time,  the  alarm 
becomes  too  great,  and  everything  is  conceded  in  hurry  and  con- 
fusion. In  the  meantime,  fresh  conspiracies  have  been  hatched  by 
the  long  delay,  and  no  gratitude  is  expressed  for  what  has  been 
extorted  by  fear.  In  this  way,  peace  was  concluded  with  Amer- 
ica, and  emancipation  granted  to  the  Catholics ;  and  in  this  way 
the  war  of  complexion  will  be  finished  in  the  West  Indies.  The 
other  method  is,  to  see  at  a  distance  that  the  thing  must  be  done, 
and  to  do  it  effectually,  and  at  once  ;  to  take  it  out  of  the  hands  of 
the  common  people,  and  to  carry  the  measure  in  a  manly  libei'al 
manner,  so  as  to  satisfy  the  great  majority.  —  The  merit  of  this 
belongs  to  the  administration  of  Lord  Grey.  He  is  the  only 
minister  I  know  of  who  has  begun  a  gi-eat  measure  in  good  time, 
conceded  at  the  beginning  of  twenty  years  what  would  have  been 
extorted  at  the  end  of  it,  and  prevented  that  folly,  violence,  and 
ignorance,  which  emanate  from  a  long  denial  and  extorted  conces- 
sion of  justice  to  great  masses  of  human  beings.  I  believe  the 
question  of  reform,  or  any  dangerous  agitation  of  it,  is  set  at  rest 
for  thirty  or  forty  years ;  and  this  is  an  eternity  in  politics. 

Boroughs  are  not  the  power  proceex:ling  from  wealth.  Many 
men,  who  have  no  boroughs,  are  infinitely  richer  than  those  who 
have — but  it  is  the  artifice  of  wealth  in  seizing  hold  of  certain 
localities.     The  boroughmonger  is  like  rheumatism,  which  owes  its 


OMNIPOTENCE   OF  KEFORM.  327 

power  not  so  much  to  the  intensity  of  the  pain  as  to  its  peculiar 
position ;  a  little  higher  up,  or  a  little  lower  down,  the  same  pain 
would  be  trifling ;  but  it  fixes  in  the  joints,  and  gets  into  the  head- 
quarters of  motion  and  activity  The  boroughmonger  knows  the 
importance  of  arthritic  positions ;  he  disdains  muscle,  gets  into  the 
joints,  and  lords  it  over  the  whole  machine  by  felicity  of  place. 
Other  men  are  as  rich  —  but  those  riches  are  not  fixed  in  the 
critical  spot. 

I  Uve  a  good  deal  with  all  ranks  and  descriptions  of  people ;  I  am 
thoroughly  convinced  that  the  party  of  democrats  and  republicans 
is  very  small  and  contemptible ;  that  the  English  love  their  insti- 
tutions—  that  they  not  only  love  this  king  (who  would  not  love 
him?)  but  the  kingly  office — that  they  have  no  hatred  to  the  aris- 
tocracy. I  am  not  afraid  of  trusting  English  happiness  to  English 
gentlemen.  I  believe  that  the  half  million  of  new  voters  will 
choose  much  better  for  the  public  than  the  twenty  or  thirty  peers, 
to  whose  usurped  power  they  succeed. 

If  any  man  doubts  the  power  of  reform,  let  him  take  these  two 
memorable  proofs  of  its  omnipotence.  First,  but  for  the  declara- 
tion against  it,  I  believe  the  Duke  of  Wellington  might  this  day 
have  been  in  office;  and,  secondly,  in  the  whole  course  of  the  de- 
bates at  county  meetings  and  in  Parliament,  there  are  not  twenty 
men  who  have  declared  against  reform.  Some  advance  an  inch, 
some  a  foot,  some  a  yard  —  but  nobody  stands  still — nobody  says, 
We  ought  to  remain  just  where  we  were  —  everybody  discovers 
that  he  is  a  reformer,  and  has  long  been  so — and  appeal's  uifi- 
nitely  delighted  with  this  new  view  of  himself.  Nobody  appears 
without  the  cockade — bigger  or  less — but  always  the  cockade. 

An  exact  and  elaborate  census  is  called  for — vast  information 
should  have  been  laid  upon  the  table  of  the  house  —  great  time 
should  have  been  given  for  deliberation.  All  these  objections, 
being  turned  into  English,  simply  mean,  that  the  chances  of  an- 
other year  should  have  been  given  for  defeating  the  lull.  In  that 
time  the  Poles  may  be  crushed,  the  Belgians  Orangized,  Louis 
Philippe  dethroned;  war  may  rage  all  over  Eui'ope  —  the  popular 
spirit  may  be  diveited  to  other  objects.  It  is  certainly  provoking 
that  the  ministry  foresaw  all  these  possibilities,  and  determined  to 
model  the  iron  while  it  was  red  and  glowing. 

It  is  not  enough  that  a  political  uastitution  works  well  practically  • 


328  THE   KING. 

it  must  be  defensible ;  it  must  be  such  as  will  beai'  discussion,  and 
not  excite  ridicule  and  contempt.  It  might  work  well  for  aught  I 
know,  if,  lilvc  the  savages  of  Onelashka,  we  sent  out  to  catch  a 
king :  but  who  could  defend  a  coronation  by  chase  ?  who  can 
defend  the  payment  of  forty  thousand  pounds  for  the  three-hun- 
dredth part  of  the  power  of  Pai-liament,  and  the  re-sale  of  this 
power  to  government  for  j^laces  to  the  Lord  Williams,  and  Lord 
Charles's,  and  others  of  the  Anglophagi  ?  Teach  a  million  of  the 
common  people  to  read — and  such  a  government  (work  it  ever  so 
well)  must  perish  in  twenty  years.  It  is  impossible  to  persuade 
the  mass  of  mankind,  that  there  are  not  other  and  better  methods  of 
governing  a  country.  It  is  so  complicated,  so  wicked,  such  envy 
and  hatred  accumulate  against  the  gentlemen  who  have  fixed  them- 
selves on  the  joints,  that  it  cannot  fail  to  perish,  and  to  be  driven 
as  it  IS  driven  from  the  country,  by  a  general  burst  of  hatred  and 
detestation.  I  meant,  gentlemen,  to  have  spoken  for  another  half- 
hour,  but  I  am  old  and  tired.  Thank  me  for  ending — but,  gentle- 
men, bear  with  me  for  another  moment ;  one  word  more  before  I 
end.  I  am  old,  but  I  thank  God  I  have  lived  to  see  more  than  my 
observations  on  human  nature  taught  me  I  had  any  right  to  expect. 
I  have  lived  to  see  an  honest  king,  in  whose  word  his  ministers 
can  trust ;  who  disdains  to  deceive  those  men  whom  he  has  called 
to  the  public  service,  but  makes  common  cause  with  them  for  the 
common  good ;  and  exercises  the  highest  powers  of  a  ruler  for  the 
dearest  interests  of  the  state.  I  have  lived  to  see  a  king  with  a 
good  heart,  who,  surrounded  by  nobles,  thinks  of  common  men ; 
who  loves  the  great  mass  of  English  people,  and  wishes  to  be 
loved  by  them ;  who  knows  that  his  real  power,  as  he  feels  that 
his  happiness,  is  founded  on  their  aifection.  I  have  lived  to  see  a 
king,  who,  without  pretending  to  the  pomp  of  superior  intellect, 
has  the  wisdom  to  see,  that  the  decayed  institutions  of  humaia 
policy  require  amendment ;  and  who,  in  spite  of  clamour,  interest, 
prejudice,  and  fear,  has  the  manliness  to  carry  these  wise  changes 
into  immediate  execution.  Gentlemen,  farewell :  shout  for  tha 
king. 


CHURCH  PATRONAGE.  320 


LETTERS  TO  ARCHDEACON  SINGLETON.* 


BISHOPS    AND    PATROXAGE. 

Never  dreaming  of  such  sudden  revolutions  as  these,  a  preben- 
dary brings  up  his  son  to  the  church,  and  spends  a  large  sum  of 
money  in  his  education,  which,  perhaps,  he  can  ill  afford.  His 
hope  is  (wicked  wretch !)  that,  accoi-ding  to  the  established  custom 
of  the  body  to  which  he  (immoral  man !)  belongs,  the  chapter  will 
(when  his  turn  arrives),  if  his  son  be  of  fair  attainments  and  good 
character  attend  to  his  nefarious  recommendation,  and  confer  the 
living  upon  the  young  man  ;  and  in  an  instant  all  his  hopes  are  de- 
stroyed, and  he  finds  his  preferment  seized  upon,  under  the  plea 
of  public  good,  by  a  stronger  churchman  than  himself,  I  can  call 
this  by  no  other  name  than  that  of  tyranny  and  oppression.  I 
know  very  well  that  this  is  not  the  theory  of  patronage  ;  but  who 
does  better? — do  individual  patrons?  —  do  colleges  who  give  in 
succession?  —  and  as  for  bishops,  lives  there  the  man  so  weak 
and  foolish,  so  little  observant  of  the  past,  as  to  believe  (when 
this  tempest  of  purity  and  pei'fection  has  blown  over)  that  the 
name  of  Blomfield  will  not  figure  in  benefices  from  which  the 
names  of  Copleston,  Blomberg,  Tate,  and  Smith,  have  been  so 
virtuously  excluded?  I  have  no  desire  to  make  odious  compar- 
isons between  the  purity  of  one  set  of  patrons  and  another,  but 
they  are  forced  upon  me  by  the  injustice  of  the  commissioners.  I 
must  either  make  such  comparisons  or  yield  up,  without  remon- 
strance, those  rights  to  which  I  am  fairly  entitled. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  bishops  will  do  better  in  future ;  that 

*  Letters    to  Archdeacon  Singleton   on   the   EcHesiastical    Commission 
1837. 


830  THE  PUBLIC  EYE. 

now  the  puUic  eye  is  upon  tliem,  tliey  will  be  ashamed  into  a  more 
lofty  and  anti-nepotic  spirit ;  but,  if  the  argument  of  past  superiority 
is  given  up,  and  the  hope  of  future  amendment  resorted  to,  why 
may  we  not  improve  as  well  as  our  masters  ?  but  the  commission 
say,  "  These  excellent  men"  (meaning  themselves)  "  have  prom- 
ised to  do  better,  and  we  have  an  imphcit  confidence  in  their  word : 
we  must  have  the  patronage  of  the  cathedrals."  Li  the  meantime, 
we  are  ready  to  promise  as  well  as  the  bishops. 

With  regard  to  that  common  newspaper  phrase,  the  jyiMic  eye 
—  there's  nothing  (as  the  bench  well  know)  more  wandering  and 
slippery  than  the  public  eye.  In  five  years  hence,  the  public  eye 
will  no  more  see  what  description  of  men  are  promoted  by  bishops, 
than  it  will  see  what  doctors  of  law  are  promoted  by  the  Turkish 
Ulhema ;  and  at  the  end  of  this  period  (such  is  the  examjile  set 
by  the  commission),  the  public  eye,  turned  in  every  direction,  may 
not  be  able  to  see  any  bishops  at  all. 

In  many  instances,  chapters  are  better  patrons  than  bishops, 
because  their  preferment  is  not  given  exclusively  to  one  species  of 
incumbents.  I  have  a  diocese  now  in  my  private  eye  which  has 
undergone  the  following  changes.  The  first  of  three  bishops  whom 
I  remember  was  a  man  of  careless,  easy  temper,  and  how  patron- 
age went  in  those  early  days  may  be  conjectured  by  the  following 
letters ;  which  are  not  his,  but  serve  to  illustrate  a  system : 

THE    BISHOP    TO    LORD   A 

My  dear  Lord, 

I  have  noticed  Avith  great  pleasure  the  behaviour  of  your  lordship's  second 
8on,  and  am  most  happy  to  have  it  in  my  power  to  offer  to  him  the  living 
of***.  He  will  find  it  of  considerable  value;  and  there  is,  I  understand 
a  very  good  house  upon  it,  &c.,  &c. 

This  is  to  confer  a  Uving  upon  a  man  of  real  merit  out  of  the 
family ;  into  which  family,  apparently  sacrificed  to  the  public  good, 
the  living  is  brought  back  by  the  second  letter :  — 

THE  SAME  TO  THE  SAME,  A  YEAR  AFTER. 

My  dear  Lord, 

Will  you  excuse  the  Liberty  I  take  in  soliciting  promotion  for  my  grandson  1 
He  is  an  officer  of  great  skill  and  gallantry,  and  can  bring  the  most  ample 
testimonials  from  some  of  the  best  men  in  the  profession  :  the  Arethusa  frig- 
ate is,  I  understand,  about  to  be  commissioned ;  and  if,  &c.,  &c. 

Now  I  am  not  saying  that  hundreds  of  prebendaries  lipve  not 
committed  such  enormities  and  stupendous    rimes  as  this  («  decla- 


BISHOPS.  331 

ration  wliicli  will  fill  the  whig  cabinet  with  hoxTor)  ;  all  that  I 
mean  to  contend  for  is,  that  such  is  the  practice  of  bishops  quite 
as  much  as  it  is  of  inferior  patrons. 

The  second  bishop  was  a  decided  enemy  of  Calvinistical  doc- 
trines, and  no  clergyman  so  tainted  had  the  slightest  chance  of 
preferment  in  his  diocese. 

The  third  bishop  could  endure  no  man  whose  principles  were 
not  stx'ictly  Calvinistic,  and  who  did  not  give  to  the  articles  that 
kind  of  interpretation.  Now  here  were  a  great  mass  of  clergy 
naturally  alive  to  the  emoluments  of  their  profession,  and  not 
knowing  which  way  to  look  or  stir,  because  they  depended  so 
entirely  upon  the  will  of  one  person.  Not  otherwise  is  it  with  a 
very  whig  bishop,  or  a  very  tory  bishop ;  but  the  worst  case  is 
that  of  a  superannuated  bishop ;  here  the  preferment  is  given 
away,  and  must  be  given  away,  by  wives  and  daughters,  or  by  sons, 
or  by  butlers,  perhaps,  and  valets,  and  the  poor  djing  patron's  para- 
lytic hand  is  guided  to  the  signature  of  papers,  the  contents  of  which 
he  is  utterly  unable  to  comprehend.  In  all  such  cases  as  these,  the 
superiority  of  bishops  as  patrons  will  not  assist  that  violence  which 
the  commissioners  have  committed  upon  the  patronage  of  cathedrals. 


ADVICE    TO    BISHOPS. 

There  is  a  practice  among  some  bishops,  which  may  as  well  be 
mentioned  here  as  anywhere  else,  but  which,  I  think,  cannot  be 
too  severely  reprobated.  They  send  for  a  clergyman,  and  insist 
upon  his  giving  evidence  respecting  the  character  and  conduct  of 
his  neighbour.  Does  he  hunt  ?  Does  he  shoot  ?  Is  he  in  debt  ? 
Is  he  temperate  ?  Does  he  attend  to  his  parish  ?  &c.,  &c.  Now, 
what  is  this,  but  to  destroy  for  all  clergymen  the  very  elements  of 
social  life — to  put  an  end  to  all  confidence  between  man  and  man 
—  and  to  disseminate  among  gentlemen,  who  are  bound  to  live  in 
concoi'd,  every  feeling  of  resentment,  hatred,  and  suspicion  ?  But 
the  very  essence  of  tyranny  is  to  act  as  if  the  finer  feelings,  like 
the  finer  dishes,  were  delicacies  only  for  the  rich  and  great,  and 
that  little  people  have  no  taste  for  them,  and  no  right  to  them.  A 
good  and  Itonest  bishop  (I  thank  God  there  ai'e  many  who  deserve 
that  character !)  ought  to  suspect  himself,  and  carefully  to  watch 
liis  own  heart.     He  is  all  of  a  sudden  elevated  from  being  a  tutor, 


332  CHEONICLE   OF   DORT. 

dining  at  an  eai'ly  hour  -with  his  pupil  (and  occasionally,  it  is  be- 
lieved, on  cold  meat),  to  be  a  spiritual  lord;  he  is  dressed  in  a 
magnificent  dress,  decorated  with  a  title,  flattered  by  chaplains,  and 
suiTounded  by  little  people  looking  up  for  the  things  which  he  has 
to  give  away ;  and  this  often  happens  to  a  man  who  has  had  no 
opportunities  of  seeing  the  world,  whose  parents  wei'e  in  very  hum- 
ble life,  and  who  has  given  up  all  his  thoughts  to  the  Frogs  of 
Aristophanes  and  the  Targum  of  Onkelos.  How  is  it  possible  that 
such  a  man  should  not  lose  his  head  ?  that  he  should  not  swell  ? 
that  he  should  not  be  guilty  of  a  thousand  follies,  and  worry  and 
tease  to  death  (before  he  recovers  his  common  sense)  a  hundred 
men  as  good,  and  as  wise,  and  as  able  as  himself. 


THE  DUTCH  CHRONICLE  OF  DORT. 

I  MET,  the  other  day,  in  an  old  Dutch  chronicle,  with  a  passage 
so  apposite  to  this  subject,  that  though  it  is  somewhat  too  light  for 
the  occasion,  I  cannot  abstain  from  quoting  it.  There  was  a  great 
meeting  of  all  the  clergy  at  Dordrecht,  and  tlie  chronicler  thus  de- 
scribes it,  which  I  give  in  the  language  of  the  translation:  "And 
there  was  great  store  of  bishops  in  the  town,  in  their  robes  goodly 
to  behold,  and  all  the  great  men  of  the  state  were  there,  and  folks 
poured  in  in  boats  on  the  Meuse,  the  Merve,  the  Ehine,  and  the 
Linge,  coming  from  the  Isle  of  Beverlandt,  and  Isselmond,  and 
from  all  quarters  in  the  Bailiwick  of  Dort ;  Arminians  and  Go- 
marists,  with  the  friends  of  John  Barneveldt  and  of  Hugh  Grote. 
And  before  my  lords  the  bishops,  Simon  of  Gloucester,  who  was  a 
bishop  in  those  parts,  disputed  with  Vorstius,  and  Leoline  the 
Monk,  and  many  texts  of  Scripture  were  bandied  to  and  fro ;  and 
when  this  was  done,  and  many  propositions  made,  and  it  waxed  to- 
ward twelve  of  the  clock,  my  lords  the  bishops  prepared  to  set 
them  down  to  a  fair  repast,  in  which  was  great  store  of  good  things, 
—  and  among  the  rest  a  roasted  peacock,  having,  in  lieu  of  a  tail, 
the  arms  and  banners  of  the  archbishop,  which  was  a  goodly  sight 
to  all  who  favoured  the  church — and  then  the  archbishop  would 
say  a  grace,  as  w^as  seemly  to  do,  he  being  a  very  holy  man ;  but 
ere  he  had  finished,  a  great  mob  of  townspeople  and  Iblks  from  the 
country,  who  were  gathered  under  the  window,  cried  out.  Bread! 
bread!  for  thex-e  was  a  great  famine,  and  wheat  had  risen  to  tln-ec 


POPULAR   CnUECH   PROMOTION.  S33 

times  the  ordinary  price  of  tlie  slet'ch;*  and  when  they  had  done 
crying  Bread!  bread!  they  called  out  No  bishops!  —  and  began 
to  cast  up  stones  at  tie  windows.  Whereat  my  lords  the  bishops 
were  in  a  great  fright,  and  cast  their  dinner  out  of  the  window  to 
appease  the  mob,  and  so  the  men  of  that  town  were  well  pleased, 
and  did  devour  the  meats  with  great  appetite ;  and  then  you  might 
have  seen  my  lords  standing  with  empty  plates,  and  looking  wist- 
fully at  each  other,  till  Simon  of  Gloucester,  he  who  disputed  with 
Leoline  the  Monk,  stood  up  among  them  and  said,  '  Good,  my  lords, 
is  it  your  pleasure  to  stand  here  fasting,  and  that  those  xoho  count 
lower  in  the  church  than  you  do,  should  feast  and  fluster  ?  Let  us 
order  to  us  the  dinner  of  the  deans  and  canons,  which  is  making 
ready  for  them  in  the  chamber  beloiv.^  And  this  speech  of  Simon 
of  Gloucester  pleased  the  bishops  much  ;  so  that  they  sent  for  the 
host,  one  William  of  Ypres,  and  told  him  it  was  for  the  public 
good,  and  he,  much  fearing  the  bishops,  brought  them  the  dinner 
of  the  deans  and  canons ;  and  so  the  deans  and  canons  went  away 
without  dinner,  and  were  pelted  by  the  men  of  the  town,  because 
they  had  not  put  any  meat  out  of  the  window  like  the  bishops ;  and 
when  the  count  came  to  hear  of  it,  he  said  it  was  a  pleasant  con- 
ceit, and  that  the  bishops  were  right  cunning  men,  and  had  dinged 
the  canons  well." 


YOUNG    CRUMPET's    ASCENT    TO    ST.    PAUL's. 

I  Air  surprised  it  does  not  strike  the  mountaineers  how  very 
much  the  great  emoluments  of  the  church  are  flung  open  to  the 
lowest  ranks  of  the  community.  Butchers,  bakers,  publicans, 
schoolmasters,  are  perpetually  seeing  their  children  elevated  to  the 
mitre.  Let  a  respectable  baker  drive  through  the  city  from  the 
west  end  of  the  town,  and  let  him  cast  an  eye  on  the  battlements 
of  Northumberland  House,  has  his  little  muffin-faced  son  the  smal- 
lest chance  of  getting  in  among  the  Percies,  enjoying  a  share  of 
their  luxury  and  splendour,  and  of  chasing  the  deer  with  hound 
and  horn  upon  the  Cheviot  Hills  ?  But  let  him  drive  his  alum- 
steeped  loaves  a  little  farther,  till  he  reaches  St.  Paul's  Church- 

*  A  measure  in  the  bailiwick  of  Dort,  containing  two  gallons  one  pint 
English  dry  measure. — Author's  Note.  The  whole  passage  from  the  Chron- 
icle, of  course,  a  pleasant  invention. 


334  LOED   MELBOURNE. 

yard,  and  all  his  thoughts  are  changed  when  he  sees  that  beautiful 
fabric ;  it  is  not  impossible  that  his  little  penny  roll  may  be 
introduced  into  that  splendid  oven.  Young  Crumpet  is  sent  to 
school  —  takes  to  his  books  —  spends  the  best  years  of  his  life,  as 
all  eminent  Englishmen  do,  in  making  Latin  verses — knows  that 
the  crum  in  crumpet  is  long,  and  the  pet  short — goes  to  the  Uni- 
versity—  gets  a  prize  for  an  Essay  on  the  Dispersion  of  the  Jews 
• — takes  orders — becomes  a  bishop's  chaplain — has  a  young  noble- 
man for  his  pupil  —  publishes  a  useless  classic,  and  a  serious  call 
to  the  unconverted  —  and  then  goes  through  the  Elysian  transi- 
tions of  prebendary,  dean,  prelate,  and  the  long  train  of  purple, 
pi'ofit,  and  power. 


LORD  MELBOURNE. 

Viscount  Melbourne  declared  himself  quite  satisfied  with  the 
church  as  it  is ;  but  if  the  public  had  any  desire  to  alter  it,  they 
might  do  as  they  pleased.  He  might  have  said  the  same  thing 
of  the  monarchy,  or  of  any  other  of  our  institutions  ;  and  there  is 
in  the  declaration  a  permissiveness  and  good  humour  which,  in 
public  men,  have  seldom  been  exceeded.  Carelessness,  however, 
is  but  a  poor  imitation  of  genius,  and  the  formation  of  a  wise  and 
well-reflected  plan  of  reform  conduces  more  to  the  lasting  fame  of 
a  minister  than  that  affected  contempt  of  duty  Avhich  every  man 
sees  to  be  mere  vanity,  and  a  vanity  of  no  very  high  description. 

But  if  the  truth  must  be  told,  our  Viscount  is  somewhat  of  an  im- 
postor. Everything  about  him  seems  to  betoken  careless  desola- 
tion ;  any  one  would  suppose  from  his  manner  that  he  was  playing 
at  chuck-fai*thing  with  human  happiness ;  that  he  was  always  on 
the  heel  of  pastime ;  that  he  would  giggle  away  the  great  charter, 
and  decide  by  the  method  of  tee-totum  whether  my  lords  the  bish- 
ops should  or  should  not  retain  their  seats  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
All  this  is  the  mere  vanity  of  surprising,  and  making  us  believe 
that  he  can  play  with  kingdoms  as  other  men  can  with  nine-pins. 
Instead  of  this  lofty  nebulo,  this  miracle  of  moral  and  intellectual 
felicities,  he  is  nothing  more  than  a  sensible,  honest  man,  who 
means  to  do  his  duty  to  the  sovereign  and  to  the  country  ;  instead 
of  being  the  ignorant  man  he  pretends  to  be,  before  he  meets  the 
deputation  of  tallow-chandlers  in  the  morning,  he  sits  up  half  the 


THE   BISHOPS   AND   SMALL   LIVINGS.  335 

night  talking  with  Thomas  Young  about  mehing  and  skimming, 
and  then,  though  he  has  acquired  knowledge  enough  to  work  oiF  a 
whole  vat  of  prime  Leicester  tallow,  he  pretends  next  morning  not 
to  know  the  difference  between  a  dip  and  a  mould.  In  the  same 
way,  when  he  has  been  employed  in  reading  acts  of  Parliament, 
he  would  persuade  you  that  he  has  been  reading  Cleghorn  on  the 
Beatitudes,  or  PicUer  on  the  Niiie  Difficult  Points.  Neither  can 
I  allow  to  this  minister  (howcA'cr  he  may  be  irritated  by  the  de- 
nial) the  extreme  merit  of  indifference  to  the  consequences  of  his 
measures.  I  believe  him  to  be  conscientiously  alive  to  the  good 
or  evil  that  he  is  doing,  and  that  his  caution  has  more  than  once 
arrested  the  gigantic  projects  of  the  Lycurgus  of  the  Lower  House. 
I  am  sorry  to  hurt  any  man's  feelings,  and  to  brush  away  the 
magnificent  fabric  of  levity  and  gayety  he  has  reared ;  but  I  accuse 
our  minister  of  honesty  and  diligence ;  I  deny  that  he  is  careless 
or  rash :  he  is  nothing  more  than  a  man  of  good  understanding, 
and  good  principle,  disguised  in  the  eternal  and  somewhat  weari- 
some affectation  of  a  pohtical  roue. 


KUSSELL    AND    THE    BISHOPS AN    APOLOGUE. 

This  is  very  good  episcopal  reasoning ;  but  is  it  true  ?  The 
bishops  and  commissioners  wanted  a  fund  to  endow  small  livings  ; 
they  did  not  touch  a  farthing  of  their  own  incomes,  only  distribu- 
ted them  a  little  more  equally ;  and  proceeded  lustily  at  once  to 
confiscate  cathedral  property.  But  why  was  it  necessary,  if  the  fund 
for  small  li%'ings  was  such  a  paramount  consideration,  that  the  fu- 
ture archbishops  of  Canterbury  should  be  left  wath  two  palaces, 
and  £15,000  per  annum?  Why  is  every  future  bishop  of  London 
to  have  a  palace  in  Fulham,  a  house  in  St.  James's  Square,  and 
£10,000  a-year?  Could  not  all  the  episcopal  functions  be  carried 
on  well  and  effectually  with  the  half  of  these  incomes  ?  Is  it  ne- 
cessary that  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  should  give  feasts  to 
aristocratic  London  ;  and  that  the  domestics  of  the  prelacy  should 
stand  with  swords  and  bag-wigs  round  pig,  and  turkey,  and  veni- 
son, to  defend,  as  it  were,  the  orthodox  gastronome  from  the  fierce 
Unitarian,  the  fell  Baptist,  and  all  the  famished  children  of  dissent  ? 
I  don't  object  to  all  this ;  because  I  am  sure  that  the  method  of 
prizes  and  blanks  is  the  best  method  of  supporting  a  church,  which 


CBG  HORNED    CATTLE    AND    THE   LION. 

must  be  considered  as  very  slenderly  endowed,  if  the  whole  were 
equally  divided  among  the  parishes ;  but  if  my  opinion  were  dif- 
ferent— if  I  thought  the  important  improvement  was  to  equalize 
prefei*ment  in  the  English  church — that  such  a  measure  was  not 
the  one  thing  foolish,  but  the  one  thing  needful — I  should  take 
care,  as  a  mitred  commissioner,  to  reduce  my  own  species  of  pre- 
ferment to  the  narrowest  limits,  before  I  proceeded  to  confiscate 
the  property  of  any  other  grade  of  the  church.  I  could  not,  as  a 
conscientious  man,  leave  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  with 
£15,000  a-year,  and  make  a  fund  by  annihilating  residentiaries  at 
Bristol  of  £500.  This  comes  of  calling  a  meeting  of  one  species 
of  cattle  only.  The  horned  cattle  say — "If  you  want  any  meat, 
kill  the  sheep ;  don't  meddle  with  us,  there  is  no  beef  to  spare." 
They  said  this,  however,  to  the  lion  ;  and  the  cunning  animal,  after 
he  had  gained  all  the  information  necessary  for  the  destruction  of 
the  muttons,  and  learned  how  well  and  widely  they  pastured,  and 
how  they  could  be  most  conveniently  eaten  up,  turns  round  and  in- 
forms the  cattle,  who  took  him  for  their  best  and  tenderest  friend, 
that  he  means  to  eat  them  up  also.  Frequently  did  Lord  John  meet 
the  destroying  bishops  ;  much  did  he  commend  their  daily  heap  of 
ruins  ;  sweetly  did  they  smile  on  each  other,  and  much  charming  talk 
was  there  of  meteorology  and  catarrh,  and  the  particular  cathedral 
they  were  pulling  down  at  each  period  ;*  till  one  fine  day,  the 
Home  Secretary,  with  a  voice  more  bland,  and  a  look  more  ardently 
affectionate,  than  that  which  the  masculine  mouse  bestows  on  his 
nibbling  female,  informed  them  that  the  government  meant  to  take 
all  the  church  property  into  their  own  hands,  to  pay  the  rates  out 
of  it,  and  deliver  the  residue  to  the  rightful  possessors.  Such  an 
effect,  they  say,  was  never  before  produced  by  a  coup  de  theatre. 
The  commission  was  separated  in  an  instant:  London  clinched 
his  fist ;  Canterbury  was  hurried  out  by  his  chaplains,  and  put  into 
a  warm  bed ;  a  solemn  vacancy  spread  itself  over  the  face  of  Glou- 
cester ;  Lincoln  was  taken  out  in  strong  hysterics.  What  a  noble 
scene  Serjeant  Talfourd  would  have  made  of  this  !  "Wliy  are  such 
talents  wasted  on  Ion  and  the  Athenian  Captive  ? 

*  "  What  cathedral  are  we  pulling  down  to-day  V  was  the  standing  ques 
tion  at  the  Commission. 


THE   BISHOP'S   SATURDAY  NIGHT.  837 

PAYING    THE    BISIIOrS. 

There  is  some  safety  in  dignity.  A  church  is  :  n  danger  when 
it  is  degraded.  It  costs  mankind  much  less  to  destroy  it  when  an 
institution  is  associated  with  mean,  and  not  with  elevated  ideas.  I 
should  like  to  see  the  subject  in  the  hands  of  H.  B.  I  would 
entitle  the  print : — 

"  The  Bishop's   Saturday  Night ;  or,  Lord  John  Russell  at  the 
Pay-Table." 

The  bishops  should  be  standing  before  the  pay-table,  and  receiv- 
ing their  weekly  allowance  ;  Lord  John  and  Spring  Rice  counting, 
ringing,  and  biting  the  sovereigns,  and  the  Bishop  of  Exeter  in- 
sisting that  the  chancellor  of  the  exchequer  has  given  him  one 
which  was  not  weight.  Viscount  ]\Ielbourne,  in  high  chuckle, 
should  be  standing,  with  his  hat  on,  and  his  back  to  the  fire,  de- 
lighted with  the  contest ;  and  the  deans  and  canons  should  be  in 
the  background,  Avaiting  till  their  turn  came,  and  the  liishops  were 
paid ;  and  among  them  a  canon,  of  large  composition,  urging  them 
on  not  to  give  way  too  much  to  the  bench.  Perhaps  I  should  add 
the  President  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  recommending  the  truck  prm- 
ciple  to  the  bishops,  and  offering  to  pay  them  m  hassocks,  cassocks, 
aprons,  shovel-hats,  sermon-cases,  and  such  hke  ecclesiastical  gear. 

But  the  madness  and  foUy  of  such  a  measure  is  in  the  revolu- 
tionary feehng  which  it  excites.  A  government  taking  into  its 
hands  such  an  immense  value  of  property  !  What  a  lesson  of  vio- 
lence and  change  to  the  mass  of  mankind  !  Do  you  want  to  accus- 
tom Englishmen  to  lose  all  confidence  in  the  permanence  of  their 
institutions — to  inure  them  to  great  acts  of  plunder — and  to  draw 
forth  all  the  latent  villanies  of  human  nature  ?  The  whig  leaders 
are  honest  men,  and  cannot  mean  this  ;  but  these  foolish  and  incon- 
sistent measures  are  the  horn-book  and  infantile  lessons  of  revolu- 
tion ;  and  remember,  it  requires  no  great  time  to  teach  mankind  to 
rob  and  murder  on  a  great  scale. 


A   FOOlOHETER. 

I  AM  astonished  that  these  ministers  neglect  the  common  pre- 
eaution  of  a  foolometer,*  with  which  no  public  man  should  be  un- 

*  Mr.  Fox  very  often  used  to  say,  "  I  wonder  what  Lord  B.  will  think  of 
this."    Lord  B.  happened  to  be  a  very  stupid  pereon,  and  the  curiosity  of 

15 


338  THE   FOOLOxMETEE. 

provided ;  I  mean,  the  acquaintance  and  society  \>j  three  or  four 
regular  Britisli  fools  as  a  test  of  public  opinion.  Every  cabinet-min- 
ister should  judge  of  all  his  measures  by  his  foolometer,  as  a  navi- 
gator crowds  or  shortens  sail  by  the  barometer  in  his  cabin.  1 
have  a  very  valuable  instrument  of  that  kind  myself,  which  I  have 
used  for  many  years ;  and  I  would  be  bound  to  predict,  with  the 
utmost  nicety,  by  the  help  of  this  machine,  the  precise  effect  which 
any  measure  would  produce  upon  jDublic  opinion.  Certainly,  I  never 
saw  anything  so  decided  as  the  effects  produced  upon  my  machine 
by  the  rate  bill.  No  man  who  had  been  accustomed  in  the  small- 
est degree  to  handle  philosophical  instruments  could  have  doubted 
of  the  stoi'm  which  was  coming  on,  or  of  the  thoroughly  un-English 
scheme  in  which  the  ministry  had  so  rashly  engaged  themselves. 


INEQUALITIES    OF    THE    CHURCH CURATES. 

I  HAVE  no  manner  of  doubt,  that  the  immediate  effect  of  passing 
the  dean  and  chapter  bill  will  be,  that  a  great  number  of  fathers 
and  uncles,  judging,  and  properly  judging,  that  the  church  is  a  very 
altered  and  deterioriat^d  profession,  will  turn  the  industry  and 
capital  of  their  elh^es  into  another  channel.  My  friend,  Robert 
Eden,  says  "  this  is  of  the  earth  earthy :"  be  it  so ;  I  cannot  help 
it,  I  paint  mankind  as  I  find  them,  and  am  not  answerable  for  their 
defects.  ^VTien  an  argument,  taken  from  real  life,  and  the  actual 
condition  of  the  world,  is  brought  among  the  shadowy  discussions  of 
ecclesiastics,  it  always  occasion  terror  and  dismay  ;  it  is  like  ^neas 
stepping  into  Charon's  boat,  which  carried  only  ghosts  and  spirits. 

"  Gemuit  sub  pondere  cymba 
Sutilis." 

The  whole  plan  of  the  Bishop  of  London  is  a  ptochogony — a 
generation  of  beggars.  He  purposes,  out  of  the  spoils  of  the 
cathedral,  to  create  a  thousand  livings,  and  to  give  to  the  thou- 

Mr.  Fox's  friends  was  naturally  excited  to  know  why  he  attached  such  im- 
portance to  the  opinion  of  such  an  ordinary  commonplace  person.  "  His 
opinion,"  said  Mr.  Fox,  "is  of  much  more  importance  than  you  are  aware 
of.  He  is  an  exact  representative  of  all  commonplace  English  prejudices,  and 
what  Lord  B.  thinksof  any  measure,  the  great  majority  of  English  people  will 
think  of  It."  It  would  be  a  good  thing  if  every  cab  net  of  philosophers  had  i* 
Lord  B.  among  them. — Author's  Note. 


A  PTOcnuxiONi.  339 

sand  clergymen  £130  per  annum  each;  a  Clu■i^lian  bishop  propo- 
sing, in  cold  blood,  to  create  a  thousand  livings  of  £130  per  annum 
each  ;  —  to  call  into  existence  a  thousand  of  the  most  unhappy  men 
on  the  face  of  the  earth — the  sons  of  the  poor,  without  hope, 
without  the  assistance  of  private  fortune,  chained  to  the  soil, 
ashamed  to  live  with  their  inferiors,  unfit  for  the  society  of  the  bet- 
ter classes,  and  dragging  about  the  English  curse  of  poverty,  without 
the  smallest  hope  that  they  can  ever  shake  it  olf.  At  present,  such 
livings  are  filled  by  young  men  who  have  better  hopes — who  have 
reason  to  expect  good  property  —  who  look  forward  to  a  college  or 
a  family  living  —  who  are  the  sons  of  men  of  some  substance,  and 
hope  so  to  pass  on  to  something  better  —  who  exist  under  the 
delusion  of  being  hereafter  deans  and  prebendaries  —  who  are 
paid  once  by  money,  and  three  times  by  hope.  Will  the  Bishop 
of  London  promise  to  the  progeny  of  any  of  these  thousand  vic- 
tims of  the  holy  innovation  that,  if  they  behave  well,  one  of  them 
shall  have  his  butler's  place  ?  another  take  care  of  the  cedars  and 
hyssops  of  his  garden?  Will  he  take  their  daughters  for  his 
nurserymaids  ?  and  may  some  of  the  sons  of  these  "  labourers  of 
the  vineyard"  hope  one  day  to  ride  the  leaders  from  St.  James's 
to  Fulham?  Here  is  hope — here  is  room  for  ambition  —  afield 
for  genius,  and  a  ray  of  amelioration  !  If  these  beautiful  feelings 
of  compassion  are  thi-obbing  under  the  cassock  of  the  bishop,  he 
ought,  in  common  justice  to  himself,  to  make  them  known. 

If  it  were  a  scheme  for  giving  ease  and  independence  to  any 
large  bodies  of  clergymen,  it  might  be  listened  to ;  but  the  revenues 
of  the  English  church  are  such  as  to  render  this  wholly  and  entirely 
out  of  the  question.  If  you  j^lace  a  man  in  a  village  in  the  coun- 
try, require  that  he  should  be  of  good  manners  and  well  educated, 
that  his  habits  and  appearance  should  be  above  those  of  the  far- 
mers to  whom  he  preaches,  if  he  has  nothing  else  to  expect  (as 
would  be  the  case  in  a  church  of  equal  division)  ;  and  if,  upon  his 
village  income,  he  is  to  support  a  wife  and  educate  a  family, 
without  any  power  of  making  himself  known  in  a  remote  and  soli- 
taiy  situation,  such  a  person  ought  to  receive  £500  per  annum,  and 
be  furnished  with  a  house.  There  are  about  10,700  parishes  in 
England  ^and  Wales,  whose  average  income  is  £285  per  annum. 
Now,  to  provide  these  incumbents  with  decent  houses,  to  keep 
them  in  repair,  and  to  raise  the  income  of  the  incumbent  to  £500 


340  A  CURATE. 

pel'  annum,  would  require  (if  all  the  incomes  of  the  bishops,  deans 
and  chapters  of  separate  dignitaries,  of  sinecure  rectories,  were 
confiscated,  and  if  the  excess  of'  all  the  livings  in  England  above 
£500  per  annum  were  added  to  them)  a  sum  of  two  millions  and 
a  half  in  addition  to  the  pi'esent  income  of  the  whole  church  ;  and 
no  power  on  earth  could  persuade  the  present  Parliament  of  Great 
Britain  to  grant  a  single  shilling  for  that  purpose.  Now,  is  it 
possible  to  pay  such  a  church  upon  any  other  princijile  than  that 
of  unequal  division?  The  pro|X)sed  pillage  of  the  cathedral  and 
college  churches  (omitting  all  consideration  of  the  separate  estate 
of  dignitaries)  would  amount,  divided  among  all  the  benefices  of 
England  to  about  £5  12s.  Q^d.  per  man:  and  this,  which  would 
not  stop  an  hiatus  in  a  cassock,  and  would  drive  out  of  the  paro- 
chial church  ten  times  as  much  as  it  brought  into  it,  is  the  panacea 
for  pauperism  recommended  by  her  majesty's  commissioners. 

But  if  this  plan  were  to  di'ive  men  of  capital  out  of  the  church, 
and  to  pauperize  the  English  clergy,  where  would  the  harm  be  ? 
Could  not  all  the  duties  of  religion  be  performed  as  well  by  poor 
clergymen  as  by  men  of  good  substance  ?  My  great  and  serious 
apprehension  is,  that  such  would  not  be  the  case.  There  Avould 
be  the  greatest  risk  that  your  clergy  would  be  fanatical,  and 
ignorant ;  that  their  habits  would  be  low  and  mean,  and  that  they 
would  be  despised. 

Then  a  picture  is  drawn  of  a  clergyman  with  £130  per  annum, 
who  combines  all  moral,  physical,  and  intellectual  advantages ;  a 
learned  man,  dedicating  himself  intensely  to  the  care  of  his  parish 
—  of  charming  manners  and  dignified  deportment — six  feet  two 
inches  high,  beautifully  proportioned,  with  a  magnificent  counte- 
nance expressive  of  all  the  cardinal  virtues  and  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments—  and  it  is  asked,  with  an  air  of  triumph,  if  such  a 
man  as  this  will  fall  into  contempt  on  account  of  his  poverty  ? 
But  substitute  for  him  an  average,  ordinary,  uninteresting  minis- 
ter ;  obese,  dumpy,  neither  ill-natured  nor  good-natured ;  neither 
learned  nor  ignorant,  striding  over  the  stiles  to  church,  with  a 
second-rate  wife  —  dusty  and  deliquescent  —  and  four  parochial 
children,  full  of  catechism  and  bread  and  butter ;  or  let  him  be  seen 
in  one  of  those  Shem-Ham-and-Japhet  buggies,  made  on  Mount 
Ararat  soon  after  the  subsidence  of  the  waters,  driving  in  the  High 
Street  of  Edmonton ;  —  among   all  his  pecuniary,    saponaceous 


REPLY    TO    AN    ATIACR.  341 

oleaginous  parishioners.  Can  any  man  of  common  sense  sf-y  that 
all  these  outward  circumstances  of  the  ministers  of  religion  have  no 
bearino;  on  relicrion  itself?  * 


REPLY   TO    THE    BISHOP    OF    GLOUCESTER. 

You  must  have  read  an  attack  upon  me  by  the  Bishop  of  Glouces- 
ter,! "1  the  course  of  Avhich  he  says  that  I  liave  not  been  appointed 
to  my  situation  as  canon  of  St.  Paul's  for  my  piety  and  Icpjming, 
but  because  I  am  a  scoiFer  and  a  jester.  Is  not  this  rather  'strong 
for  a  bishop,  and  does  it  not  appear  to  you,  IMr.  Archdea-i^on,  as 
rather  too  close  an  imitation  of  that  language  which  is  used  in  the 
apostolic  occupation  of  trafficking  in  fish  ?  Whether  I  have  been 
appointed  for  my  piety  or  not,  must  depend  upon  what  this  poor  man 
means  by  piety.  He  means  by  that  word,  of  course,  a  defence  of 
all  the  tyrannical  and  oppressive  abuses  of  the  church  which  have 
been  swept  away  within  the  last  fifteen  or  twenty  years  of  my  life ; 
the  corporation  and  test  acts  ;  the  penal  laws  against  the  Catholics ; 
the  compulsory  marriages  of  dissenters,  and  all  those  disabling  and 
disqualifying  laws  which  were  the  disgrace  of  our  church,  and 
which  he  has  always  looked  up  to  as  the  consummation  of  human 
wisdom.  If  piety  consisted  in  the  defence  of  these- — if  it  was  im- 
pious to  struggle  for  their  abrogation,  I  have,  indeed,  led  an  un- 
godly life. 

There  is  nothing  pompous  gentlemen  are  so  much  afraid  of  as 
a  little  humour.  It  is  like  the  objection  of  certain  cephalic  ani- 
malculae  to  the  use  of  small-tooth  combs  —  "Finger  and  thumb, 
precipitate  powder,  or  anything  else  you  please ;  but  for  Heaven's 

*  Compare  Smith's  picture  of  A  Curate,  in  his  article  "Persecuting  Bishops" 
(Ed.  Rev.  Nov.  1822)  :— 

"A  curate — there  is  something  wliich  excites  compassion  in  the  very  name 
of  a  curate  ! ! !  How  any  man  of  purple,  palaces,  and  preferment,  can  let 
himself  loose  against  this  poor  workman  of  God,  we  are  at  a  loss  to  conceive 
—  a  learned  man  in  a  hovel,  with  sermons  and  saucepans,  lexicons  and 
bacon,  Hebrew  books  and  ragged  children  —  good  and  patient  —  a  comforter 
and  a  preacher — the  first  and  purest  pauper  in  the  hamlet,  and  yet  .showing, 
that,  in  the  midst  of  his  worldly  miserj',  he  has  the  heart  of  a  gentleman  and 
the  spirit  of  a  Christian,  and  the  kindness  of  a  pastor." 

t  James  Henry  Monk,  appointed  Bishop  of  Gloucester  in  1830.  He  has 
published  various  sermons  and  charges,  an  edition  of  the  Alcestis  of  Euripides, 
and  a  life  of  Eichard  Bentlev. 


342  PRELATES    AND    PROMOTION. 

sake  no  small-tooth  combs !"  After  all,  I  believe  Bi^hop  Monk 
has  been  the  cause  of  much  more  laughter  than  ever  I  have  been ; 
I  cannot  account  for  it,  but  I  never  see  him  enter  a  room  without 
exciting  a  smile  on  every  countenance  within  it. 

Dr.  Monk  is  furious  at  my  attacking  the  heads  of  the  church : 
but  how  can  I  help  it  ?  If  the  heads  of  the  church  are  at  the  head 
of  the  mob,  if  I  find  the  best  of  men  doing  that  which  has  in  all 
times  drawn  upon  the  worst  enemies  of  the  human  race  the  bitter- 
est curses  of  history,  am  I  to  stop  because  the  motives  of  these  men 
are  pure,  and  their  lives  blameless?  I  Avish  I  could  find  a  blot  in 
their  lives,  or  a  vice  in  their  motives.  The  whole  power  of  the 
motion  is  in  the  character  of  the  movers ;  feeble  friends,  false 
friends,  and  foolish  friends,  all  cease  to  look  into  the  measure,  and 
say,  "Would  such  a  measure  have  been  recommended  by  such  men 
as  the  prelates  of  Canterbury  and  London,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
public  advantage  ?"  And  in  this  way  the  great  good  of  a  religious 
establishment,  now  rendered  moderate  and  compatible  with  all 
men's  liberties  and  rights,  is  sacrificed  to  names  ;  and  the  church  de- 
stroyed from  good  breeding  and  etiquette !  the  real  truth  is,  that 
Canterbury  and  London  have  been  frightened — they  have  over- 
looked the  effect  of  time  and  delay — they  have  been  betrayed 
into  a  fearful  and  ruinous  mistcike.  Painful  as  it  is  to  teach  men 
who  ought  to  teach  us,  the  legislature  ought,  while  there  is  yet 
time,  to  awake  and  read  them  this  lesson. 

It  is  dangerous  for  a  prelate  to  write ;  and  whoever  does  it 
ought  to  be  a  very  wise  one.  He  has  speculated  why  I  was  made 
a  canon  of  St.  Paul's.  Suppose  I  were  to  follow  his  example, 
and,  going  through  the  bench  of  bishops,  w^ere  to  ask  for  what 
reason  each  man  had  been  made  a  bishop ;  suppose  I  were  to  go 
into  the  county  of  Gloucester,  &c.,  &c.,  &c. ! ! !  ! ! 

I  was  afraid  the  bishop  would  attribute  my  promotion  to  the 
Edinburgh  Review  ;  but  upon  the  subject  of  promotion  by  reviews, 
he  preserves  an  impenetrable  silence.  If  my  excellent  patron.  Earl 
Grey,  had  any  reasons  of  this  kind,  he  may  at  least  be  sure  that 
the  reviews  commonly  attributed  to  me,  were  really  written  by  me. 
I  should  have  considered  myself  as  the  lowest  of  created  beings,  to 
have  disguised  myself  in  another  man's  wit  and  sense,  and  to  have 
received  a  reward  to  which  I  was  not  entitled.* 

"^  I  understand  that  the  bishop  bui-sts  into  tears  every  now  ajul  then,  and 


GLOUCESTER.  343 

I  presume  that  Avliat  has  drawn  upon  me  the  indignation  of  this 
prelate,  is  the  observations  1  have,  from  time  to  time,  made  on  the 
conduct  of  the  Commissioners,  of  which  he  positively  asserts  himself 
to  liave  been  a  member ;  but  whether  he  was,  or  was  not,  a  member, 
I  utterly  acquit  him  of  all  possible  blame,  and  of  every  species  of 
imputation  which  may  attach  to  the  conduct  of  the  Commission 
In  using  that  word,  I  have  always  meant  the  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, the  Bishop  of  London,  and  Lord  John  Russell ;  and  have, 
honestly  speaking,  given  no  more  heed  to  the  Bishop  of  Glouces- 
ter, than  if  he  had  been  sitting  in  a  commission  of  Bonzes  in  the 
Court  of  Pekin. 

To  read,  however,  his  Lordship  a  lesson  of  good  manners,  I  had 
px'oposed  for  him  a  chastisement  which  would  have  been  echoed 
from  the  Seagrave  who  banqueteth  in  the  Castle  to  the  idiot  who 
spitteth  over  the  bridge  at  Gloucester ;  but  the  following  appeal 
struck  my  eye,  and  stopped  my  pen :  "  Since  that  time  my  in- 
adequate qualifications  have  sustained  an  appalling  diminution  by 
the  affection  of  my  eyes,  which  has  impaired  my  vision,  and  the 
j)rogress  of  which  threatens  to  consign  me  to  darkness ;  I  beg  the 
benefit  of  your  prayers  to  the  Father  of  all  mercies,  that  he  will 
restore  to  me  the  better  use  of  the  visual  organs,  to  be  employed 
on  his  service ;  or  that  he  will  inwardly  illumine  the  intellectual 
vision,  with  a  particle  of  that  divine  ray,  which  his  Holy  Spirit 
can  alone  impart." 

It  might  have  been  better  taste,  perhaps,  if  a  mitred  invalid,  in 
describing  his  bodily  infirmities  before  a  church  full  of  clergymen, 
whose  prayers  he  asked,  had  been  a  little  more  sparing  in  the 
abuse  of  his  enemies ;  but  a  good  deal  must  be  forgiven  to  the 
sick.  I  wish  that  every  Christian  was  as  well  aware  as  this  poor 
bishop  of  what  he  needed  from  Divine  assistance  ;  and  in  his  sup- 
plication for  the  restoration  of  his  sight,  and  the  improvement  of 
his  understanding,  I  most  fervently  and  cordially  join. 

says  that  I  have  set  him  the  name  of  Simon  [ante.  p.  333],  and  that  all  the 
bishops  now  call  him  Simon.  Simon  of  Gloucester,  however,  after  all,  is  a 
real  writer,  and  how  could  I  know  that  Dr.  Jlonk's  name  was  Simon  ?  When 
tutor  in  Lord  Carrington's  family,  he  was  called  by  the  endearing,  though 
somewh.at  unmajcstic  name  of  Dick ;  and  jf  I  had  thought  about  his  name  at 
all.  1  should  h'lve  called  him  Eichard  of  Gloucester. — Author's  Note. 


344  RAILWAYS. 


LETTERS  ON  RAILWAYS. 


"locking  in"  on  railways. 


To  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Clironicle : — 

Sir  :  It  falls  to  my  lot  to  travel  frequently  on  the  Great  Western 
Railway,  and  I  request  pennission,  through  the  medium  of  your 
able  and  honest  journal,  to  make  a  complaint  against  the  directors 
of  that  company.  .  It  is  the  custom  on  that  railway  to  lock  the 
passengers  in  on  both  sides  —  a  custom  which,  in  spite  of  the 
dreadful  example  at  Paris,  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  they 
mean  to  continue  without  any  relaxation. 

In  the  coui'se  of  a  long  life  I  have  no  recollection  of  any  acci- 
dent so  shocking  as  that  on  the  Paris  railway* — a  massacre  so 
sudden,  so  full  of  torment — death  at  the  moment  of  pleasure — 
death  aggravated  by  all  the  amazement,  fear,  and  pain,  which  can 
be  condensed  into  the  last  moments  of  existence. 

Who  can  say  that  the  same  scene  may  not  be  acted  over  again 
on  the  Great  Western  Railroad? — that  in  the  midst  of  their  tun- 
nel of  three  miles  length,  the  same  scene  of  slaughter  and  com- 
bustion may  not  scatter  dismay  and  alarm  over  the  whole  country  ? 

It  seems  to  me  perfectly  monstrous  that  a  board  of  ten  or  twelve 
monopolists  can  read  such  a  description,  and  say  to  the  public, 
"  You  must  run  your  chance  of  being  burnt  or  mutilated.     We 

*  The  accident  in  May,  1842,  on  the  Versailles  line,  near  Meudon.  By  the 
breaking  of  the  axle  of  the  first  engine,  the  other  engine  and  cars  attached 
were  forced  forward  and  set  fire  to.  In  consequence  of  keeping  the  doors  of 
the  cars  locked,  n^ore  than  a  hundred  persons  were  burnt  alive,  without  po*- 
eibiUty  of  escape 


LOCKING    DOORS.  S-15 

have  arranged  our  plan  upon  the  locking-in  system,  tmd  we  shall 
not  incur  the  risk  and  expense  of  changing  it." 

The  plea  is,  tliat  rash  or  drunken  people  will  attempt  to  get 
out  of  the  carriages  whi:h  are  not  locked,  and  that  this  measure 
really  originates  from  attention  to  the  safety  of  the  public ;  so 
that  the  lives  of  two  hundred  persons  who  are  not  drunk,  and  are 
not  rash,  are  to  be  endangered  for  the  half-yearly  preservation  of 
some  idiot,  upon  whose  body  the  coroner  is  to  sit,  and  over  whom 
the  sudden-death  man  is  to  deliver  his  sermon  against  the  directors. 

The  very  fact  of  locking  the  doors  will  be  a  frequent  source  of 
accidents.  Mankind,  whatever  the  directors  may  think  of  thai 
process,  are  impatient  of  combustion.  The  Paris  accident  will 
never  be  forgotten.  The  passengers  will  attempt  to  escape  through 
the  windows,  and  ten  times  more  of  mischief  will  be  done  than  if 
they  had  been  left  to  escape  by  the  doors  in  the  usual  manner. 

It  is  not  only  the  locking  of  the  doors  which  is  to  be  deprecated  ; 
but  the  effects  Avhich  it  has  upon  the  imagination.  Women,  old 
people,  and  the  sick,  are  all  forced  to  travel  by  the  railroad ;  and 
for  two  hundred  miles  they  live  under  the  recollection,  not  only  of 
impending  danger,  but  under  tire  knowledge  that  escape  is  impos- 
sible—  a  journey  comes  to  be  contemplated  Avith  horror.  Men 
cannot  persuade  the  females  of  their  families  to  travel  by  the 
railroad ;  it  is  inseparably  connected  with  abominable  tyranny  and 
perilous  imprisonment. 

AVhy  does  the  necessity  of  locking  both  doors  exist  only  on  the 
Great  Western  ?  Why  is  one  of  the  doors  left  open  on  all  other 
railways  ? 

The  public  have  a  right  to  every  advantage  under  permitted 
monopoly  which  they  would  enjoy  under  free  competition ;  and 
they  are  unjust  to  themselves  if  they  do  not  insist  upon  this  right. 
If  there  were  two  parallel  railways,  the  one  locking  you  in,  and 
the  other  not,  is  there  the  smallest  doubt  which  would  carry  away 
all  the  business?  Can  there  be  any  hesitation  in  which  timid 
women,  drunken  men,  sages,  philosophers,  bishops,  and  all  com- 
bustible beings,  would  place  themselves  ? 

I  very  much  doubt  the  legality  of  locking  doors,  and  refusing  to 
open  them.  I  arrive  at  a  station  where  others  are  admitted ;  but 
I  am  not  suffered  to  get  out,  though  perhaps  at  the  point  of  death. 
In  all  other  positions  of  life  there  is  egress  where  there  is  ingress. 

15* 


346  directors'  philanthropy. 

Man  is  universally  the  master  of  his  own  body,  except  he  chooses 
to  go  from  Paddington  to  Bridgewater:  there  only  the  Habeas 
Corpus  is  refused. 

Nothing,  in  fact,  can  be  mo  :e  utterly  silly  or  mistaken  than  this 
over-ofScious  cai'e  of  the  public ;  as  if  every  man,  who  was  not  a 
railway  director,  was  a  child  or  a  fool.  But  why  stop  here? 
Why  are  not  strait-waistcoats  used  ?  Why  is  not  the  accidental 
traveller  strapped  down?  Why  do  contusion  and  fracture  still 
remain  physically  possible  ? 

Is  not  this  extreme  care  of  the  public  new  ?  When  first  mail- 
coaches  began  to  travel  twelve  miles  an  hour,  the  outsides  (if  I 
remember  rightly)  were  never  tied  to  the  roof.  In  packets,  lands- 
men are  not  locked  into  the  cabin  to  prevent  them  from  tumbling 
overboard.  This  affectionate  nonsense  prevails  only  on  the  Great 
Wesi  em.  It  is  there  only  that  men,  women,  and  cliildren  (seeking 
the  only  mode  of  transit  which  remains),  are,  by  these  tender- 
hearted monopolists,  immediately  committed  to  their  locomotive 
prisoTis.  Nothing  can,  in  fact,  be  so  absurd  as  all  this  officious 
zeal.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  directors  to  talie  all  reasonable  precau- 
tions lo  warn  the  public  of  danger — to  make  it  clear  that  there  is 
no  negligence  on  the  part  of  the  railroad  directors ;  and  then,  this 
done,  if  a  fool-hardy  person  choose  to  expose  himself  to  danger, 
so  b«  it.  Fools  there  will  be  on  roads  of  iron,  and  on  roads  of 
gravel,  and  they  must  suffer  for  their  folly ;  but  why  ai'e  Socrates, 
Solc:i,  and  Solomon,  to  be  locked  up  ? 

But  is  all  this,  which  appears  so  philanthropical,  mere  philan- 
thrc^y?  Does  not  the  locking  of  the  doors  save  servants  and 
policemen  ?  Does  not  economy  mingle  with  these  benevolent 
feelmgs  ?  Is  it  to  save  a  few  fellow-creatures,  or  a  few  pounds, 
that  •'he  children  of  the  West  are  to  be  hermetically  sealed  in  the 
locomotives  ?  I  do  not  say  it  is  so  ;  but  I  say  it  deserves  a  very 
seri-js  examination  whether  it  be  so  or  not.  Great  and  heavy  is 
the  sin  of  the  directors  of  this  huge  monopoly,  if  they  repeat  upon 
their  own  iron  the  tragedy  of  Paris,  in  order  to  increase  their 
dividends  a  few  shillings  per  cent. 

The  country  has  (perhaps  inevitably)  given  way  to  this  great 
monopoly.  Nothing  can  make  it  tolerable  for  a  moment,  but  the 
most  severe  and  watchful  jealousy  of  the  manner  in  which  its 
powers  are  exercised.     We  shall  have  tyrannical  rules,  vexatious 


THE   FEMALE   HOMO.  347 

rules,  ill-temper,  pure  folly,  and  meddling  and  impertinent  pater- 
nity. It  is  the  absolute  duty  of  Lord  Ripon  and  Mr.  Gladstone 
(if  the  directors  prove  themselves  to  be  so  inadequate  to  the  new 
situation  in  which  they  are  placed)  to  restrain  and  direct  them  by 
law ;  and  if  these  two  gentlemen  are  afraid  of  the  responsibiUty 
of  such  laws,  they  are  deficient  in  the  moral  courage  which  their 
office  requires,  and  the  most  important  interests  of  the  public  are 
neglected.     I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

Sydney  Smith. 
May  21,  1842. 


"LOCKING-IN"    ON    RAILWAYS. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Chronicle  : — 

Sir:  Since  the  letter  upon  railroads  which  you  were  good 
enough  to  insert  in  your  paper,  I  have  had  some  conversation  with 
two  gentlemen  officially  connected  with  the  Great  Western.  Though 
nothing  could  be  more  courteous  than  their  manner,  nor  more  in- 
telligible than  their  arguments,  I  remain  unshaken  as  to  the  neces- 
sity of  keeping  the  doors  open. 

There  is  in  the  first  place,  the  effect  of  imagination,  the  idea 
that  all  escape  is  impossible,  that  (let  what  will  happen)  you  must 
sit  quiet  in  first  class  No.  2,  whether  they  are  pounding  you  into  a 
jam,  or  burning  you  into  a  cinder,  or  crumbling  you  into  a  human 
powder.  These  excellent  directors,  versant  in  wood  and  metal, 
seem  to  require  that  the  imagination  should  be  sent  by  some  other 
conveyance,  and  that  only  loads  of  unimpassioned,  unintellectual 
flesh  and  blood  should  be  darted  along  on  the  Western  rail ; 
whereas,  the  female  homo  is  a  screaming,  parturient,  interjectional, 
hysterical  animal,  whose  delicacy  and  timidity  monopolists  (even 
much  as  it  may  surprise  them)  must  be  taught  to  consult.  The 
female,  in  all  probability,  never  would  jump  out ;  but  she  thinks 
she  may  jump  out  when  she  pleases ;  and  this  is  intensely  com- 
fortable. 

There  are  two  sorts  of  dangers  which  hang  over  railroads.  The 
one,  retail  dangers,  where  individuals  only  are  concerned  ;  the 
other,  wholesale  dangers,  where  the  whole  train,  or  a  considerable 
part  of  it,  is  put  in  jeopardy.  For  the  first  danger  there  is  a  rem- 
edy in  the  prudence  of  individuals ;  for  the  second,  there  is  none. 


348  A  .  HEMIPLEGIAN  LAW. 

No  man  need  be  drunk,  nor  need  he  jump  out  when  the  carriage 
is  in  motion,  but  in  the  present  state  of  science  it  is  imjjossible  to 
guard  effectually  against  the  fracture  of  the  axletree,  or  the  explo- 
sion of  the  engine ;  and  if  the  safety  of  the  one  party  cannot  be 
consulted  but  by  the  dangers  of  the  other,  if  the  foolish  cannot  be 
restrained  but  by  the  unjust  incarceration  of  the  wise,  the  prior 
consideration  is  due  to  those  who  have  not  the  remedy  for  the  evil 
in  their  o^vn  hands. 

But  the  truth  is  —  and  so  (after  a  hundred  monopolizing  exper- 
iments on  public  patience)  the  railroad  directors  will  find  it — there 
can  be  no  other  dependence  for  the  safety  of  the  public  than  the 
care  which  every  human  being  is  inchned  to  take  of  his  own  life 
and  limbs.  Everything  beyond  this  is  the  mere  lazy  tyi'anny  of 
monopoly,  which  makes  no  disthiction  between  human  beings  and 
brown  paper  parcels.  If  riding  were  a  monopoly,  as  travelling  in 
carriages  is  now  become,  there  are  many  gentlemen  whom  I  see 
riding  in  the  Park  upon  such  false  principles,  that  I  am  sure  the 
cantering  and  gallojjing  directors  would  strap  them,  in  the  ardour 
of  their  affection,  to  the  saddle,  padlock  them  to  the  stirrups,  or 
compel  them  to  ride  behind  a  policeman  of  the  stables ;  and  noth- 
ing but  a  motion  from  O'Brien,  or  an  order  from  Gladstone,  could 
release  them. 

Let  the  company  stick  up  all  sorts  of  cautions  and  notices  within 
their  carriages  and  without ;  but,  after  that,  no  doors  locked.  If 
one  door  is  allowed  to  be  locked,  the  other  will  soon  be  so  too ; 
there  is  no  other  security  to  the  public  than  absolute  prohibition 
of  the  practice.  The  directors  and  agents  of  the  Great  Westsrn 
are  individually  excellent  men  ;  but  the  moment  men  meet  in  pub- 
lic boards,  they  cease  to  be  collectively  excellent.  The  fund  of 
morality  becomes  less,  as  the  individual  contributors  increase  in 
number.  I  do  not  accuse  such  respectable  men  of  any  wilful  vio- 
lation of  truth,  but  the  memoirs  which  they  are  about  to  present 
will  be,  without  the  scrupulous  cross-examination  of  a  committee 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  mere  waste-paper. 

But  the  most  al)surd  of  all  legislative  enactments  is  this  hemi  • 
plegian  law  —  an  act  of  Farliament  to  protect  one  side  of  the  body 
and  not  the  other.  If  the  wheel  comes  off  on  the  right,  the  open 
door  is  uppermost,  and  every  one  is  saved.  If,  from  any  sudden 
avalanche  on  the  road,  the  carriage  is  prostrated  to  the  left,  thfl 


KATLWAY   TRAVELLING.  349 

locked  door  is  uppermost,  all  escape  is  impossible,  and  the  railroad 
martyrdom  begins. 

Leave  me  to  escape  in  tlie  best  way  I  can,  as  the  fire-officers  very 
kindly  pei-mit  me  to  do.  I  know  very  well  the  danger  of  getting 
out  on  the  oft-side  ;  but  escape  is  the  affair  of  a  moment ;  suppose 
a  train  to  have  passed  at  that  moment,  I  know  I  am  safe  from  any 
other  trains  for  twenty  minutes  or  half  an  hour ;  and  if  I  do  get 
out  on  the  off"-side  I  do  not  i-emain  in  the  valley  of  death  between 
the  two  trains,  but  am  over  to  the  opposite  bank  in  an  instant — 
only  half-roasted  or  merely  browned,  certainly  not  done  enough 
for  the  Great  Western  directors. 

On  Saturday  morning  last,  the  wheel  of  the  public  carriage,  in 
which  a  friend  of  mine  was  travelling,  began  to  smoke,  but  was 
pacified  by  several  buckets  of  water,  and  proceeded.  After  five 
moi*e  miles,  the  whole  carriage  was  full  of  smoke,  the  train  was 
with  difficulty  stopped,  and  the  flagrant  vehicle  removed.  The 
axle  was  nearly  in  two,  and  in  another  mile  would  have  been 
severed. 

Railroad  travelling  is  a  delightful  improvement  of  human  life. 
Man  is  become  a  bird  ;  he  can  fly  longer  and  quicker  than  a  Solan 
goose.  The  mamma  rushes  sixty  miles  in  two  hours  to  the  aching 
finger  of  her  conjugating  and  declining  grammar-boy.  The  early 
Scotchman  scratches  himself  in  the  morning  mists  of  the  north, 
and  has  porridge  in  Piccadilly,  before  the  setting  sun.  The  Pusey- 
ite  priest,  after  a  rush  of  one  hundred  miles,  appears  witli  his  little 
volume  of  nonsense  at  the  breakfast  of  his  bookseller.  Everythino- 
is  near,  everything  is  immediate — time,  distance,  and  delay,  are 
abolished.  But,  though  charming  and  fascinating  as  all  this  is, 
we  must  not  shut  our  eyes  to  the  price  w^e  shall  pay  for  it.  There 
will  be  every  three  or  four  years  some  dreadful  massacre  —  whole 
trains  will  be  hurled  down  a  precipice,  and  two  hundred  or  three 
hundred  persons  will  be  killed  on  the  spot.  There  will  be  every 
now  and  then  a  great  combustion  of  human  bodies,  as  thei-e  has 
been  at  Paris:  then  all  the  newspapers  up  in  arms  —  a  tliousand 
regulations  forgotten  as  soon  as  the  directors  dare  —  loud  screams 
of  the  velocity  whistle  —  monopoly  locks  and  bolts  as  before. 

The  locking  plea  of  directors  is  philanthropy  ;  and  I  admit  that 
to  guard  men  from  the  commission  of  moral  evil  is  as  philanthropi- 
cal  as  tc  prevent  physical  suffering.     There  is,  I  allow,  a  strong 


350  SACEIFICES   A   BISHOP. 

propensity  in  mankind  to  travel  on  railroads  without  paving ;  and 
to  lock  mankind  in  till  they  have  completed  their  share  of  the  con- 
tract, is  benevolent,  because  it  guards  the  species  from  degrading 
and  immoral  conduct ;  but  to  burn  or  crush  a  whole  train,  merely 
to  prevent  a  few  immoral  insides  from  not  paying,  is,  I  hope,  a 
little  more  than  Eipon  or  Gladstone  will  beai\ 

TVe  have  been,  up  to  this  point,  very  cai'eless  of  our  railway 
regulations.  The  first  person  of  rank  who  is  killed  will  put  every- 
thing in  order,  and  produce  a  code  of  the  most  careful  rules.  I 
hope  it  will  not  be  one  of  the  bench  of  bishops ;  but  should  it  be 
so  destined,  let  the  burned  bishop  —  the  unwilling  Latimer — re- 
member that,  however  painful  gradual  concoction  by  fire  may  be, 
his  death  will  produce  unspeakable  benefit  to  the  public.  Even 
Sodor  and  Man  will  be  better  than  nothing.  From  that  moment 
the  bad  effects  of  the  monopoly  are  destroyed  ;  no  more  fatiil  defer- 
ence to  the  directors  ;  no  despotic  incarceration  ;  no  barbai'ous  in- 
attention to  the  anatomy  and  physiology  of  the  human  body ;  no 
commitment  to  locomotive  prisons,  with  warrant.  We  shall  then 
find  it  possible — 

"Voyager  libre  sans  mourir." 

Sydney  Smith 
JnNE  7,  1842. 


BURNING    ALIVE    ON    RAILROADS. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Chronicle: — 

Sir  :  —  Having  gradually  got  into  this  little  controversy  respect- 
ing the  burnins:  human  beings  alive  on  the  railroads,  I  must  beg  leave, 
preparatory  to  the  introduction  of  the  bill,  to  say  a  few  more  words 
on  the  subject.  If  I  could  have  my  will  in  these  matters,  I  would 
introduce  into  the  bill  a  clause  absolutely  prohibitory  of  all  lock- 
ing doors  on  railroads  ;  but  as  that  fascinating  board,  the  Board  of 
Trade,  does  not  love  this,  and  as  the  public  may,  after  some  repe- 
titions of  roasted  humanity,  be  better  prepared  for  such  peremptory 
legislation,  the  better  method,  perhaps,  will  be,  to  give  to  the  Board 
of  Trade  the  power  of  opening  doors  (one  or  both),  with  the  custom- 
ary penalties  against  the  companies  for  disobedience  of  orders,  and 
then  the  Board  may  use  this  jiower  as  the  occasion  may  require. 

To  pass  a  one-legged  law,  giving  power  over  one  door,  and  not 
the  othen  would,  perhaps  be  too  absurd  for  human  endurance.    If 


SAFETY  DEMANDED.  351 

railroad  companies  were  aware  of  tlieir  real  and  extended  inter- 
ests, they  Avould  n;)t  harass  the  public  by  vexatious  regulations, 
nor,  under  the  plea  of  humanity  (tho  igli  really  for  purposes  of 
economy),  expose  them  to  serious  peril.  The  country  are  very 
angry  with  themselves  for  having  granted  the  monopoly,  and  very 
angry  for  the  instances  of  carelessness  and  oppression  which  have 
appeared  in  the  working  of  the  system:  the  heaviest  fines  are  inflict- 
ed by  coroner's  juries,  the  heaviest  damages  are  given  by  common 
juries.  Eailroads  have  daily  proof  of  their  unpopularity.  If  Par- 
liament get  out  of  temper  with  these  metallic  ways,  they  will  visit 
them  with  laws  of  iron,  and  burst  upon  them  with  the  high  pres- 
sure of  despotism. 

The  w^ayfaring  men  of.  the  North  Avill  league  with  the  wayfaring 
men  of  the  West — South  and  East  will  join  hand  in  hand  against 
them.  All  the  points  of  the  compass  will  combine  against  these  ven- 
ders of  velocity  and  traders  in  transition.  I  hope  a  clause  will  be 
introduced,  compelling  the  Board  of  Trade  to  report  twice  a  year  to 
Parliament,  upon  the  accidents  of  railroads,  their  causes,  and  their 
prevention.  The  public  know  little  or  nothing  of  what  happens 
on  the  rail.  All  the  men  Avitli  letters  upon  the  collars  of  their 
coats  are  sworn  to  secrecy  —  nothing  can  be  extracted  from  them; 
when  anything  happens  they  neither  appear  to  see  nor  hear  you. 

In  case  of  conflagration,  you  would  be  to  them  as  so  many  joints 
on  the  spit.  It  has  occurred  to  five  hundred  persons,  that  soft  im- 
pediments behind  and  before  (such  as  wool),  would  prevent  the 
dangers  of  meeting  or  overtaking.  It  is  not  yet  understood  why  a 
carriage  on  fire  at  the  end  of  the  train  cannot  be  seen  by  the  driver 
of  the  engine.  All  this  may  be  great  nonsense ;  but  the  public  ought 
to  know  that  these  points  have  been  properly  considered ;  they 
should  know  that  there  are  a  set  of  officers  paid  to  watch  over  their 
interests,  and  to  guard  against  the  perpetual  encroachments,  the 
carelessness,  the  insolence,  and  the  avarice  of  monoj^oly. 

Why  do  not  our  dear  Ripon  and  our  youthful  Gladstone  see 
this,  and  come  cheerfully  to  the  rescue  ?  and  instead  of  wrapping 
themselves  up  in  transcendental  philosophy,  and  the  principles  of 
letting-aloneness,  why  do  they  not  at  once  do  what  ought  to  be  done 
—  what  must  be  done  —  and  what,  after  many  needless  butcheries, 
thej  will  at  last  be  comnelled  to  do  ?     Yours,     Sydney  Smith. 

June  18,  1842. 


352  SIR   ROBERT    PEEL. 

[Sir  Eobert  Peel  having  insinuated,  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
that  the  zeal  of  Sydney  Smith  in  the  Railway  Question  might  be 
owing  to  personal  fear,  the  following  characteristic  reply  appeared 
in  a  daily  paper.] 

To  Sir  Robert  Peel  : — 

A  cruel  attack  upon  me,  Sir  Robert,  to  attribute  all  my  inter- 
ference with  the  arbitrary  proceedings  of  railroads  to  personal  fear. 
Nothing  can  be  more  ungrateful  and  unkind.  I  thought  only  of 
you,  and  for  you,  as  many  whig  gentlemen  will  bear  me  testimony, 
who  rebuked  me  for  my  anxiety.  I  said  to  myself  and  to  them, 
"  Our  lovely  and  intrepid  minister  may  be  overthrown  on  the  rail. 
The  locked  door  may  be  uppermost.  He  will  kick  and  call  on  the 
Speaker  and  vSergeant-at-Arms  in  vain.  Nothing  will  remain  of 
all  his  graces,  his  flexibility,  his  fascinating,  facetious  fun,  his  social 
warmth  ;  nothing  of  his  flow  of  soul,  of  his  dear  heavy  pleasantry, 
of  his  prevailing  skill  to  impart  disorderly  wishes  to  the  purest 
heart.  Nothing  will  remain  of  it  at  all,  but  a  heap  of  ashes  for 
the  parish  church  of  Tamworth.  He  perishes  at  the  moment  he 
is  becoming  as  powerful  in  the  drawing-room  of  Court  as  in  the 
House  of  Parliament  —  at  the  moment  when  IluUah  (not  without 
hopes  of  ultimate  success),  is  teaching  him  to  sing  and  Melnotte 
to  dance." 

I  have  no  doubt  of  your  bravery,  Sir  Robert,  though  you  have 
of  mine ;  but  then  consider  what  different  lives  we  have  led,  and 
what  a  school  of  courage  is  that  troop  of  yeomanry  at  Tam\'i'orth, 
the  Tory  Fencibles.  Who  can  doubt  of  your  courage  who  has 
seen  you  at  their  head,  marching  up  Pitt  street,  through  Dundas 
square,  on  the  Liverpool  lane,  and  looking  all  the  while  like  those 
beautiful  medals  of  Bellona  Frigida  and  Mars  sine  sanguine,  the 
very  horses  looking  at  you  as  if  you  were  going  to  take  away 
three  per  cent,  of  their  oats !  After  such  spectacles  as  these,  the 
account  you  give  of  your  own  courage  cannot  be  doubted.  The 
only  little  circumstance  which  I  cannot  entirely  reconcile  to  the 
possession  of  this  very  high  attribute  in  so  eminent  a  degree  is, 
that  you  should  have  selected,  for  your  uncourteous  attack,  enemies 
who  cannot  resent,  and  a  place  where  there  can  be  no  reply. 
I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

Sydney  Smith. 


PETITION   TO   CONGRESS.  353 


LETTERS  ON  AMERICAN  DEBTS. 


The  Hujible  Petition  of  the  Rev.   Sydney  Smith  to  the 
House  op  Con<3ress  at  Washington. 

I  petition  your  honourable  House  to  institute  some  measures 
for  the  restoration  of  American  credit,  and  for  the  repayment  of 
debts  incurred  and  repudiated  by  several  of  the  States.  Your 
Petitioner  lent  to  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  a  sum  of  money,  for 
the  purpose  of  some  public  improvement.  The  amount,  though 
small,  is  to  him  important,  and  is  a  saving  from  a  life  income, 
made  with  difficulty  and  privation.  If  their  refusal  to  pay  (from 
which  a  very  large  number  of  English  families  are  suffering)  had 
been  the  result  of  war,  produced  by  the  unjust  aggression  of 
powerful  enemies  ;  if  it  had  arisen  from  civil  discord ;  if  it  had 
proceeded  from  an  improvident  application  of  means  in  the  first 
years  of  self-government ;  if  it  were  the  act  of  a  poor  State  strug- 
glmg  against  the  barrenness  of  nature  —  every  friend  of  America 
would  have  been  contented  to  wait  for  better  times  ;  but  the  fraud 
is  committed  in  the  profound  peace  of  Pennsylvania,  by  the 
richest  State  in  the  Union,  after  the  wise  investment  of  the  bor- 
rowed money  in  roads  and  canals,  of  which  the  repudiators  are 
every  day  reaping  the  advantage.  It  is  an  act  of  bad  faith  which 
(all  its  circumstances  considered)  has  no  parallel,  and  no  excuse. 

Nor  is  it  only  the  loss  of  property  which  your  Petitioner  laments. 
He  laments  still  more  that  immense  power  which  the  bad  faith  of 
America  has  given  to  aristocratical  opinions,  and  to  the  enemies  of 
free  institutions  in  the  old  world.  It  is  vain  any  longer  to  appeal 
to  history,  and  to  point  out  the  wrongs  which  the  many  have 


354  INJURY   TO    FEEEDOM. 

received  from  the  fevi'.  The  Americans,  who  boast  to  have  im- 
proved the  institutions  of  the  old  world,  have  at  least  equalled  its 
crimes.  A  great  nation,  after  trampling  under  foot  all  earthly 
tyranny,  has  been  guilty  of  a  fraud  as  enormous  as  ever  disgraced 
the  worst  king  of  the  most  degraded  nation  of  Europe. 

It  is  most  painful  to  your  Petitioner  to  see  that  American  f'U.- 
izens  excite,  wherever  they  may  go,  the  recollection  that  they 
belong  to  a  dishonest  people,  who  pride  themselves  on  having 
tricked  and  pillaged  Europe;  and  this  mark  is  fixed  by  their  faith- 
less legislators  on  some  of  the  best  and  most  honourable  men  in 
the  w^orld,  whom  every  Englishman  has  been  eager  to  see  and 
proud  to  receive. 

It  is  a  subject  of  serious  concern  to  your  Petitioner  that  you  are 
losing  all  that  power  which  the  friends  of  freedom  rejoiced  that 
you  possessed,  looking  upon  you  as  the  ark  of  human  happiness, 
and  the  most  splendid  picture  of  justice  and  of  wisdom  that  the 
W'Orld  had  yet  seen.  Little  did  the  friends  of  America  expect  it, 
and  sad  is  the  spectacle  to  see  you  rejected  by  every  State  in 
Europe,  as  a  nation  with  whom  no  contract  can  be  made,  because 
none  will  be  kept ;  unstable  in  the  very  foundations  of  social  life, 
deficient  in  the  elements  of  good  faith,  men  who  prefer  any  load 
of  infamy  however  great,  to  any  pressure  of  taxation  however 

Nor  is  it  only  this  gigantic  bankruj^tcy  for  so  many  degrees  of 
longitude  and  latitude  which  your  petitioner  deplores,  but  he  is 
alarmed  also  by  that  total  want  of  shame  with  which  these  things 
have  been  done ;  the  callous  immorality  with  which  Europe  has 
been  plundered,  that  deadness  of  the  moral  sense  Avhich  seems  to 
preclude  all  return  to  honesty,  to  perpetuate  this  new  infamy,  and 
to  threaten  its  extension  over  every  State  in  the  Union. 

To  any  man  of  real  philanthropy,  who  receives  ^^leasure  from 
the  improvements  of  the  world,  the  repudiation  of  the  public 
debts  of  America,  and  the  shameless  manner  in  which  it  has  been 
talked  of  and  done,  is  the  most  melancholy  event  which  has  hap- 
pened during  the  existence  of  the  present  generation.  Your  Pe- 
titioner sincerely  prays  that  the  great  and  good  men  still  existing 
among  you  may,  by  teaching  to  the  United  States  the  deep  dis- 
grace they  have  incurred  in  the  whole  world,  restore  them  to  moral 
health,  to  that  high  position  they  have  lost,  and  which,  for  tlif- 


THE   AMERICAN  DmDENDS.  855 

happiness  of  mankind,  it  is  so  important  they  sfiould  ever  main- 
tain ;  for  the  United  States  are  now  working  out  the  greatest  of 
all  political  problems,  and  upon  that  confederacy  the  eyes  of 
thinking  men  ai-e  intensely  fixed,  to  see  how  far  the  mass  of  man- 
kind can  be  trusted  with  the  management  of  their  own  affairs, 
and  the  establishment  of  their  own  happiness. 

May  18,  1843. 


LETTER    I. 


To  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Chronicle  : — 

Sir  :  You  did  me  the  favour,  some  time  since,  to  insert  in  your 
valuable  journal  a  petition  of  mine  to  the  American  Congress,  for 
the  repayment  of  a  loan  made  by  me,  in  common  with  many  other 
unwise  people,  to  the  State  of  Pennsylvania.  For  that  petition  I 
have  been  abused  in  the  grossest  manner  by  many  of  the  Ameri- 
can papers.  After  some  weeks'  reflection,  I  see  no  reason  to  alter 
my  opinions,  or  to  retract  my  expressions.  What  I  then  said  was 
not  wild  declamation,  but  measured  truth.  I  repeat  again,  that  no 
conduct  was  ever  more  profligate  than  that  of  the  State  of  Penn- 
sylvania. History  cannot  pattern  it :  and  let  no  deluded  being 
imagine  that  they  will  ever  repay  a  single  farthing — their  people 
have  tasted  of  the  dangerous  luxury  of  dishonesty,  and  they  will 
never  be  brought  back  to  the  homely  rule  of  right.  The  money 
transactions  of  the  Americans  are  become  a  by-word  among  the 
nations  of  Europe.  In  every  grammar-school  of  the  old  world 
ad  GrcBcas  Calendas  is  translated — the  American  dividends. 

I  am  no  enemy  to  America.  I  loved  and  admired  honest 
America  when  she  respected  the  laws  of  pounds,  shillings,  and 
pence ;  and  I  thought  the  United  States  the  most  magnificent  pic- 
ture of  human  happiness :  I  meddle  now  in  these  matters  be- 
cause I  hate  fraud — because  I  pity  the  misery  it  has  occasioned 
— because  I  mourn  over  the  hatred  it  has  excited  against  free  in- 
btitutions. 

Among  the  discussions  to  which  the  moral  lubricities  of  this  in- 
solvent people  have  given  birth,  they  have  arrogated  to  them- 
belves  the  right  of  sitting  in  judgment  upon  the  property  of  their 
creditors — of  deciding  who  among  them  is  rich,  and  who  poor. 


356  EXIIAUSTIOM. 

and  who  are  proper  objects  of  compassionate  payment ;  but  in  tJie 
name  of  Mercury,  the  great  god  of  thieves,  did  any  man  ever  hear 
of  debtors  alleging  the  weaUh  of  the  lender  as  a  reason  for  eluding 
the  payment  of  the  loan  ?  Is  the  Stock  Exchange  a  place  for  the 
tables  of  the  money-lenders ;  or  is  it  u  school  of  moralists,  who 
may  amerce  the  rich,  exalt  the  poor,  and  correct  the  inequalities 
of  fortune  ?  Is  Biddle  an  instrument  in  the  hand  of  Providence 
to  exalt  the  humble,  and  send  the  rich  empty  away  ?  Does 
American  Providence  work  with  such  instruments  as  Biddle  ? 

But  the  only  good  part  of  this  bad  morality  is  not  acted  upon. 
The  rich  are  robbed,  but  the  poor  are  not  paid :  they  growl  against 
the  dividends  of  Dives,  and  don't  lick  the  sores  of  Lazarus. 
They  seize,  with  loud  acclamations,  on  the  money-bags  of  Jones 
Loyd,  Rothschild,  and  Baring,  but  they  do  not  give  back  the  pit- 
tance of  the  widow,  and  the  bread  of  the  child.  Those  knaves 
of  the  setting  sun  may  call  me  rich,  for  I  have  a  twentieth  part 
of  the  income  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury ;  but  the  curate 
of  the  next  parish  is  a  wretched  soul,  bruised  by  adversity ;  and 
the  three  hundred  pounds  for  his  children,  which  it  has  taken 
his  life  to  save,  is  eaten  and  drunken  by  the  mean  men  of  Penn- 
sylvania— by  men  who  are  always  talking  of  the  virtue  and  hon- 
our of  the  United  States — by  men  who  soar  above  others  in 
what  they  say,  and  sink  below  all  nations  in  what  they  do  —  who, 
after  floating  on  tlie  heaven  of  declamation,  fall  down  to  feed  on 
the  offal  and  gai-bage  of  the  earth. 

Persons  who  are  not  in  the  secret  are  inclined  to  consider  tlie 
abominable  conduct  of  the  repudiating  States  to  proceed  from 
exhaustion  —  "  They  don't  pay  because  they  cannot  pay ;  whereas, 
from  estimates  which  have  just  now  reached  this  country,  this  is 
the  picture  of  the  finances  of  the  insolvent  states.  Their  debts 
may  be  about  200  millions  of  dollars ;  at  an  interest  of  G  per  cent., 
this  makes  an  annual  charge  of  12  millions  of  dollars,  which  is  little 
more  than  1  per  cent,  of  their  income  in  1840,  and  may  be 
presumed  to  be  less  than  1  per  cent,  of  their  present  income  ;  but 
if  they  were  all  to  provide  funds  for  the  punctual  payment  of 
interest,  the  debt  could  readily  be  converted  into  a  4  or  5  per  cent, 
stock,  and  the  excess,  converted  into  a  sinking  fund,  would  dis- 
charge the  debt  in  less  than  thirty  years.  The  debt  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, estimated  at  40  millions  of  dollars,  bears,  at  5  per  cent.. 


A    PARTITION    SUIT.  357 

an  annual  interest  of  2  millioMs.  The  income  of  tliis  State  was., 
in  1840,  131  millions  of  dollars,  and  is  probably  at  this  time  not 
less  than  150  millions:  a  net  revenue  of  only  1^  per  cent,  would 
produce  the  2  milHons  required.  So  that  the  price  of  national 
character  in  Pennsylvania  is  1^  per  cent,  on  the  net  income  ;  and 
if  this  market  price  of  morals  were  established  here,  a  gentleman 
of  a  thousand  a  year  would  deliberately  and  publicly  submit 
to  infamy  for  £15  per  annum  ;  and  a  poor  man,  who  by  laborious 
industry  had  saved  one  hundred  a  yeai",  Avould  incur  general 
disgrace  and  opprobrium  for  thirty  shillings  by  the  year.  There 
really  should  be  lunatic  asylums  for  nations  as  well  as  for  in- 
dividuals. 

But  they  begin  to  feel  all  this :  their  tone  is  changed ;  they  talk 
with  bated  breath  and  whispering  apology,  and  allay  with  some 
cold  drops  of  modesty  their  skipping  spirit.  They  strutted  into 
this  miserable  history,  and  begin  to  think  of  sneaking  out. 

And  then  the  subdolous  press  of  America  contends  that  the 
English  under  similar  circumstances  would  act  with  their  own 
debt  in  the  same  manner ;  but  there  are  many  English  constituen- 
cies whei'e  are  thousands  not  worth  a  shilling,  and  no  such  idea 
has  been  broached  among  them,  nor  has  any  petition  to  such  effect 
been  presented  to  the  legislature.  But  what  if  they  did  act  in 
such  a  manner,  would  it  be  a  conduct  less  wicked  than  that  of  the 
Americans?  Is  there  not  one  immutable  laAV  of  justice?  —  is  it 
not  written  in  the  book  ?  Does  it  not  beat  in  the  heart  ?  —  are  the 
great  guide-marks  of  life  to  be  concealed  by  such  nonsense  as  this  ? 
I  deny  the  fact  on  which  the  reasoning  is  founded;  and  if  the 
facts  were  true,  the  reasoning  would  be  false. 

I  never  meet  a  Pennsylvanian  at  a  London  dinner  without 
feeling  a  disposition  to  seize  and  divide  him; — to  allot  his  beaver 
to  one  sufferer  and  his  coat  to  another — to  appropriate  his  pocket- 
handkerchief  to  the  orphan,  and  to  comfort  the  widow  with  his 
silver  watch,  Broadway  rings,  and  the  London  Guide,  which  he 
always  carries  in  his  pockets.  How  such  a  man  can  set  himself 
down  at  an  English  table  without  feeling  that  he  owes  two  or 
three  pound^s  to  every  man  in  company  I  am  at  a  loss  to  conceive  : 
he  has  no  more  right  to  eat  with  honest  men  than  a  leper  has  to 
eat  with  clean  men.  If  he  has  a  particle  of  honour  in  his  compo- 
sition he  should  shut  himself  uj),  and  say,  "  I  cannot  mingle  witL 


S58  WAR   AND    CREDIT, 

you,  I  belong  to  a  degraded  peo2:)le  —  I  must  hide  myself — I  am 
a  plunderer  from  Pennsylvania." 

Figure  to  yourself  a  Pennsylvanian  receiving  foreigners  in  his 
own  country,  walking  over  the  public  works  with  them,  and 
showing  them  Larcenous  Lake,  Swindling  Swamp,  Crafty  Canal, 
and  Rogues'  Railway,  and  other  dishonest  works.  "  This  swamp 
we  gained,"  says  the  patriotic  borrower,  "  by  the  repudiated  loan  of 
1828.  Our  canal  robbery  was  in  1830;  we  pocketed  your  good 
people's  money  for  the  railroad  only  last  year."  All  this  may 
seem  very  smart  to  the  Americans ;  but  if  I  had  the  misfortnne  to 
])e  born  among  such  a  people,  the  land  of  my  fathers  should  not 
retain  me  a  single  moment  after  the  act  of  repudiation.  I  would 
appeal  from  my  fathers  to  my  forefathers.  I  would  fly  to  New- 
gate for  greater  purity  of  thought,  and  seek  in  the  prisons  of  Eng 
land  for  better  rules  of  life. 

This  new  and  vain  peoj^le  can  never  forgive  us  for  having  pre- 
ceded them  300  years  in  civilization.  They  are  prepared  to  enter 
into  the  most  bloody  wars  in  England,  not  on  account  of  Oregon, 
or  boundaries,  or  right  of  search,  but  because  our  clothes  and 
carriages  are  better  made,  and  because  Bond  Street  beats  Broad- 
way. AVise  Webster  does  all  he  can  to  convince  the  people  that 
these  are  not  lawful  causes  of  war ;  but  wars,  and  long  wars,  they 
will  one  day  or  another  produce;  and  this,  perhajjs,  is  the  only 
advantage  of  repudiation.  The  Americans  cannot  gratify  their 
avarice  and  ambition  at  once ;  they  cannot  cheat  and  conquer  at 
the  same  time.  The  warhke  powder  of  every  country  depends  on 
their  Three  per  cents.  If  Ci^esar  were  to  reappear  upon  earth, 
Wettenhall's  List  would  be  more  important  than  his  Commentaries ; 
Rothschild  would  open  and  shut  the  temple  of  .Janus ;  Thomas 
Baring,  or  Batef  would  pi'obably  command  the  Tenth  Legion, 
and  the  soldiers  would  march  to  battle  with  loud  cries  of  Scrip 
and  Omnium  reduced.  Consols  and  CiEsar  !  Now,  the  Americans 
have  cut  themselves  off  from  all  resources  of  credit.  Having  been 
5is  dishonest  as  they  can  be,  they  are  prevented  from  being  as 
foolish  as  they  wish  to  be.  Li  the  whole  habitable  globe  they 
cannot  borrow  a  guinea,  and  they  cannot  draw  the  sword  because 
they  have  not  money  to  buy  it. 

If  I  were  an  American  of  any  of  the  honest  States,  I  woi  Id 
never  rest  till  I  had  compelled  Pennsylvania  to  be  as  honest  as 


PRINCIPLES.  359 

myself.  The  bad  faitli  of  that  State  brings  disgi-ace  on  all ;  just 
as  common  snakes  ai-e  killed  because  vipers  are  dangerous.  I 
have  a  general  feeling,  that  by  that  breed  of  men  I  have  been 
robbed  and  ruined,  and  I  shudder  and  keep  aloof.  The  pecuniary 
credit  of  every  State  is  affected  by  Pennsylvania.  Ohio  pays ; 
but  with  such  a  bold  bankruptcy  before  their  eyes,  how  long  will 
Ohio  pay?  The  truth  is,  that  the  eyes  of  all  capitalists  are 
averted  from  the  United  States.  The  finest  commercial  under- 
standings will  have  nothing  to  do  with  them.  Men  rigidly  just, 
who  penetrate  boldly  into  the  dealings  of  nations,  and  woi'k  with 
vigour  and  virtue  for  honourable  wealth  —  great  and  high-minded 
merchants  —  will  loathe,  and  are  now  loathing,  the  name  of  Amer- 
ica :  it  is  becoming,  since  its  fall,  the  common-shore  of  Europe,  and 
the  native  home  of  the  needy  villain. 

And  now,  drab-coloured  men  of  Pennsylvania,  there  is  yet  a 
moment  left:  the  eyes  of  all  Eui-ope  are  anchored  upon  you  — 

"  Surrexit  mundus  justis  furiis  :" 

start  up  from  that  trance  of  dishonesty  into  which  you  are  plunged  ; 
don't  think  of  the  flesh  which  walls  about  your  hfe,  but  of  that 
sin  Avhich  has  hurled  you  from  the  heaven  of  character,  which 
hangs  over  you  like  a  devouring  pestilence,  and  makes  good  men 
sad,  and  ruffians  dance  and  sing.  It  is  not  for  Gin  Sling  f»nd 
Sherry  Cobler  alone  that  man  is  to  live,  but  for  those  great  prin- 
ciples against  which  no  argument  can  be  listened  to  —  principles 
which  give  to  every  power  a  double  power  above  their  functions 
and  their  offices,  which  are  the  books,  the  arts,  the  academies  that 
teach,  lift  up,  and  nourish  the  Avorld — principles  (I  am  quite  seri- 
ous in  what  I  say)  above  cash,  superior  to  cotton,  higher  than 
currency — principles,  without  which  it  is  better  to  die  than  to  live 
which  every  servant  of  God,  over  every  sea  and  in  all  lands, 
should  cherish — usque  ad  ahdita  spiramenta  animce. 

Yours,  &c.  Sydney  Smith. 

November  3,  1843. 


LETTER    II. 
To  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Chronicle : — 

Sir  :    Having  been  unwell  for  some  days  past,  I  have  had  no 
opportunity  of  paying  my  respects  to  General  Duff  Green,  who 


360  A    FABLE   FROM    PILPAY. 

(whatever  be  his  other .  merits)  has  certainly  not  shown  himself  a 
Washington  in  defence  of  his  country.  The  General  demands, 
with  a  beautiful  simplicity,  "  Whence  this  morhid  hatred  of  Amer- 
ica ?"  But  tlus  question,  all-affecting  as  it  is,  is  stolen  from  Pil- 
pay's  fables.  "  A  fox,"  says  Pilpay,  "  caught  by  the  leg  in  a  trap 
near  the  farm-yard,  uttered  the  most  piercing  cries  of  distress ; 
forthwith  all  the  birds  of  the  yard  gathered  round  him,  and  seem- 
ed to  delight  in  his  misfortune ;  hens  chuckled,  geese  hissed,  ducks 
quacked,  and  chanticleer  with  shrill  cockadoodles  rent  the  air. 
'  Yt^hence,'  said  the  fox,  stepping  forward  with  infinite  gravity, 
'  whence  this  morbid  hatred  of  the  fox  ?  What  have  I  done  ? 
"\Yhom  have  I  injured  ?  I  am  overwhelmed  with  astonishment  at 
these  symptoms  of  aversion.'  '  Oh,  you  old  villain,'  the  poultry 
exclaimed,  '  Where  are  our  ducklings  ?  Where  are  our  goslings  ? 
Did  not  I  see  you  running  away  yesterday  with  my  mother  in 
your  mouth  ?  Did  you  not  eat  up  all  my  relations  last  week  ? 
You  ought  to  die  the  worst  of  deaths  —  to  be  pecked  into  a  thou- 
sand pieces.' "  Now  hence.  General  Green,  comes  the  morbid 
hatred  of' America,  as  you  term  it — because  her  conduct  has 
been  predatory — because  she  has  ruined  so  many  helpless  chil- 
dren, so  many  miserable  women,  so  many  aged  men — because  she 
has  disturbed  the  order  of  the  woi'ld,  and  rifled  those  sacred 
treasures  which  human  virtue  had  hoarded  for  human  misery. 
Why  is  such  hatred  morbid  ?  Why,  is  it  not  just,  inevitable,  in- 
nate? Why,  is  it  not  disgraceful  to  want  it?  Why,  is  it  not 
honourable  to  feel  it? 

Plate  America  !  ! !  I  have  loved  and  honoured  America  all  my 
life ;  and  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  and  at  all  opportunities  which 
my  trumpery  sphere  of  action  has  afforded,  I  have  never  ceased  to 
praise  and  defend  the  United  States ;  and  to  every  American  to 
whom  I  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  introduced,  I  have  proffer- 
ed all  the  hospitality  in  my  power.  But  I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to 
enormous  dishonesty ;  nor,  remembering  their  former  state,  can  I 
restrain  myself  from  calling  on  them  (though  I  copy  Satan)  to 
spring  up  from  the  gulf  of  infamy  in  which  they  are  rol- 
ling— 

"Awake,  arise,  or  be  for  ever  fallen." 

I  am  astonished  that  the  honest  States  of  America  do  not  draw 
a  cordon  sanitaire  round  their  unpaying  brethren  —  that  the  truly 


SOLVENT   STATES.  861 

mercantile  New-Yorkers,  and  the  tliorouglily  honest  people  of 
Massachusetts,  do  not  in  their  European  visits  wear  a  uniform 
with  "  S.  S.,  or  Solvent  States,"  worked  in  gold  letters  upon  the 
coat,  and  receipts  in  full  of  all  demands  tamboured  on  the  waist- 
coats, and  "  our  own  property"  figured  on  their  pantaloons. 

But  the  General  seems  shocked  that  I  should  say  the  Americans 
cannot  go  to  Avar  without  money :  but  what  do  I  mean  by  war  ? 
Not  irruptions  into  Canada — not  the  embodying  of  militia  in  Ore- 
gon ;  but  a  long,  tedious,  maritime  war  of  four  or  five  years'  dura- 
tion. Is  any  man  so  foolish  as  to  suppose  that  Rothschild  lias 
nothing  to  do  with  such  wars  as  these  ?  And  that  a  bankrupt 
State,  without  the  power  of  borrowing  a  shilling  in  the  world,  may 
not  be  crippled  in  such  a  contest  ?  We  all  know  that  the  Ameri- 
cans can  fight.  Nobody  doubts  their  courage.  I  see  now  in  my 
mind's  eye  a  whole  army  on  the  plains  of  Pennsylvania  in  battle 
array,  immense  corps  of  insolvent  light  infantry,  regiments  of 
heavj'^  horse  debtors,  battalions  of  repudiators,  brigades  of  bank- 
rupts, with  Vivre  sans  fayer,  on,  mourir,  on  their  banners,  and  cere 
alieno  on  their  trumpets  :  all  these  desperate  debtors  would  fight  to 
the  death  for  their  country,  and  probably  drive  into  the  sea  their 
invading  creditors.  Of  their  courage,  I  repeat  again,  I  have  no 
doubt.  I  wish  I  had  the  same  confidence  in  their  wisdom.  But 
I  believe  they  will  become  intoxicated  by  the  flattery  of  unprinci- 
pled orators ;  and,  instead  of  entering*  with  us  into  a  noble  compe- 
tition in  making  calico  (the  great  object  for  which  the  Anglo-Sax- 
on race  appears  to  have  been  created)  they  will  waste  their  hap- 
piness and  their  money  (if  they  can  get  any)  in  years  of  silly, 
oloody,  foohsh,  and  accursed  w^ar,  to  prove  to  the  world  that 
Perkins  is  a  real  fine  gentleman,  and  that  the  carronades  of  the 
Washington  steamer  will  carry  farther  than  those  of  the  Britisher 
Victoria,  or  the  Robert  Peel  vessel-of-war. 

I  am  accused  of  applying  the  epithet  repudiation  to  States 
which  have  not  repudiated.  Perhaps  so;  but  then  these  latter 
States  have  not  paid.  But  what  is  the  difference  between  a  man 
who  says,  "  I  don't  owe  you  anything,  and  will  not  pay  you,"  and 
asiother  who  says,  "  I  do  owe  you  a  sum,"  and  who,  having  admit- 
ted the  debt,  never  pays  it  ?  There  seems  in  the  first  to  be  some 
slight  colour  of  right ;  but  the  second  is  broad,  blazing,  refulgent, 
meridian  fraud. 

16 


3G2  PENAL   PLUMES. 

It  may  be  very  true  that  rich  and  educated  men  in  Pennsylva- 
nia wish  to  pay  the  debt,  and  that  the  real  objectors  are  the  Dutcli 
and  German  agricuUurists,  who  cannot  be  made  to  understand  the 
effect  of  character  upon  clover.  All  this  may  be  very  true,  but  it 
is  a  domestic  quarrel.  Their  church-wardens  of  reputation  must 
make  a  private  rate  of  infamy  for  themselves — we  have  nothing 
to  do  with  this  rate.  The  real  quarrel  is  the  Unpaid  World  versus 
the  State  of  Pennsylvania. 

And  now,  dear  Jonathan,  let  me  beg  of  you  to  follow  the  advice 
of  a  real  friend,  who  will  say  to  you  what  Wat  Tyler  had  not  the 
virtue  to  say,  and  what  all  speakers  in  the  eleven  recent  Pennsyl- 
vanian  elections  have  cautiously  abstained  from  saying — "Make  a 
great  effort ;  book  up  at  once,  and  pay."  You  have  no  conception 
of  the  obloquy  and  contempt  to  which  you  are  exposing  yourselves 
all  over  Europe.  Bull  is  naturally  disposed  to  love  you,  but  he 
loves  nobody  who  does  not  pay  him.  His  imaginary  paradise  is 
some  planet  of  punctual  payment,  where  ready  money  prevails, 
and  where  debt  and  discount  are  unknown.  As  for  me,  as  soon  as 
I  hear  that  the  l^st  farthing  is  paid  to  the  last  creditor,  I  will  ap- 
pear on  my  knees  at  the  bar  of  the  Pennsylvanian  Senate  in  the 
plumeopicean  robe  of  American  controversy.  Each  Conscript 
Jonathan  shall  trickle  over  me  a  few  drops  of  tar,  and  help  to  dec- 
orate me  with  those  penal  plumes  in  which  the  vanquished  reason- 
er  of  the  transatlantic  world  does  homage  to  the  physical  superi- 
ority of  his  opponents.  And  now,  having  eased  my  soul  of  its 
indignation,  and  sold  my  stock  at  40  per  cent,  discount,  I  sulkily 
retire  from  the  subject,  with  a  fixed  intention  of  lending  no  more 
money  to  free  and  enlightened  republics,  but  of  employing  my 
money  henceforth  in  buying  up  Abyssinian  bonds,  and  purchasing 
into  the  Turkish  Fours,  or  the  Tunis  Three-and-a-half  per  Cent, 
funds. 

Sydney  Smith. 
November  22,  1843. 


raE  IRISH  CHURCH.  863 


A  FRAGMENT  ON 

THE  IRISH  ROMAN  CATHOLIC  CHURCH.* 


The  revenue  of  the  Irish  Roman  Catholic  Church  is  made  up 
of  half-pence,  potatoes,  rags,  bones,  and  fragments  of  old  clothes, 

*  This  unrevised  fragment  was  found  among  the  papers  of  Sydney  Smith 
after  bis  death.  It  was  tirst  published  in  April,  1845,  with  the  prefatory 
remark  that,  "if  it  serve  no  otlier  purpose,  will,  at  least,  prove  that  his  last, 
as  well  as  bis  earliest  efforts,  were  exerted  for  the  promotion  of  religious 
freedom,  and  may  satisfy  those  who  have  objected  to  bis  later  writings,  be- 
cause his  own  interest  appeared  to  be  bound  up  with  his  opinions,  tliat  be 
did  not  hesitate  to  the  last  moment  of  his  life,  boldly  to  advocate  what  he 
considered  to  be  justice  to  others."  The  manuscript  was  accompanied  by  the 
following  Private  Memoranda  of  Subjects  intended  to  have  been  introduced 
in  the  Pamphlet,  &c.  The  subjects  marked  by  a  star  are  treated  of  in  the 
Fragment. 

Debates  in  tlie   House  of  Commons  in  1823,  on  the  motion  of  Lord  F. 
Egerton,  for  the  support  of  the  Roman  Catholic  clergy.     Printed  separ- 
ately, I  believe,  in  Ireland. 
Evidence   before   the   House   of  Commons,  in   1824   and    1825,    including 

Doyle's. 
A  Speech  of  Charles  Grant's,  in  1819,  on  a  motion  of  James  Daly  to  enforce 

the  Insurrection  Act. 
Debates  on  Maynoolh,  in  February  last  (1844). 
Hard  case  of  the  priest's  first  year. 
Provision  offered  by  Pitt  and  Castlereagh,  and  accepted  by  the  hierarchy. 

*  Send  ambassadors  to  Constantinople,  and  refuse  to  send  them  to  Rome. 
England  should  cast  off  its  connection  with  the  Irish  Church. 

Lord  F.  Egerton's  plan  for  paying  the  Roman  Catholic  clergy  in  1&25.     The 
prelates  agree  to  take  the  money. 

*  Old  mode  of  governing  by  Protestants  at  an  end. 

*  Vast  im]M-ovemcnts  since  the  Union,  and  fully  specified  in  Martin,  page  35 

*  Priests  dare  not  thwart  the  people,  for  fear  of  losing  money. 

*  Dreadful  oppression  of  the  people. 

*  Bishons  dare  not  enforce  their  rules.     They  must  have  money. 


364  SHE   IS   NOT  WELL. 

and  those  Irish  old  clothes.  They  worship  often  m  hovels,  or  in 
the  open  air,  from  the  want  of  any  place  of  worship.  Their 
religion  is  the  religion  of  three  fourths  of  the  population !  Not 
far  off,  in  a  well-windowed  and  well-roofed  house,  is  a  well-paid 
Protestant  clergyman,  preaching  to  stools  and  hassocks,  and  crying 
in  the  wilderness ;  near  him  the  clerk,  near  him  the  sexton,  near 
liim  the  sexton's  wife — furious  against  the  errors  of  Poper}',  and 
willing  to  lay  down  their  lives  for  the  great  truths  established  at 
the  Diet  of  Augsburg. 

There  is  a  story  in  the  Leinster  family  which  passes  under  the 
name  of 

"  She  is  not  well." 

A  Protestant  clergyman,  whose  church  was  in  the  neighbourhood, 
was  a  guest  at  the  house  of  that  upright  and  excellent  man,  the 
Duke  of  Leinster.  He  had  been  staying  there  three  or  four  days  ; 
and  on  Saturday  night,  as  they  were  all  retiring  to  their  rooms, 
the  duke  said,  "  We  shall  meet  to-morrow  at  breakfast."  "  Not  so," 
said  our  Milesian  Protestant;  "your  hour,  my  lord,  is  a  little  too 
late  for  me  ;  I  am  very  particular  in  the  discharge  of  my  duty,  and 
your  breakfast  will  interfere  with  my  church."  The  duke  was 
pleased  with  the  very  proper  excuses  of  his  guest,  and  they  sep- 
arated for  the  night ;  his  grace,  perhaps,  deeming  his  palace  more 
safe  from  all  the  evils  of  life  for  containing  in  its  bosom  such  an 
exemplary  son  of  the  Church.  The  first  person,  however,  whom 
the  duke  saw  in  the  morning,  upon  entering  the  breakfast-room, 
was  our  punctual  Protestant,  deep  in  rolls  and  butter,  his  finger  in 
an  egg,  and  a  large  slice  of  the  best  Tip2:)erary  ham  secured  on  his 
plate.  "  Delighted  to  see  you,  my  dear  vicar,"  said  the  duke ; 
"  but  I  must  say  as  much  surprised  as  delighted."  "  Oh,  don't  you 
know  what  has  happened  ?"  said  the  sacred  breakfaster,  "  she  is 
not  well"  " "Who  is  not  well ?"  said  the  duke :  "  you  are  not 
married  —  you  have  no  sister  living — I'm  quite  uneasy;  tell  me 
who  is  not  well."  "  Why,  the  fact  is,  my  lord  duke,  that  my  con- 
gregation consists  of  the  clerk,  the  sexton,  and  the  sexton's  wife. 
Now  the  sexton's  wife  is  in  very  delicate  health :  when  she  cannot 
attend,  we  cannot  muster  the  number  mentioned  in  the  rubric  ;  and 
we  have,  therefore,  no  service  on  that  day.  The  good  woman  had 
a  cold  and  sore  throat  this  morning,  and,  as  I  had  breakfasted  but 
slightly,  I  thought  I  might  as  well  hurry  back  to  the  regular  family 


O'CONNELL.  SG5 

dejeuner."  T  don't  know  lliat  the  clergyman  behaved  improperly  ; 
but  such  a  church  is  hardly  worth  an  insurrection  and  civil  war 
every  ten  years. 

Sir  Robert  did  well  in  fighting  it  out  with  O'Connell.  lie  was 
too  late ;  but  when  he  began  he  did  it  boldly  and  sensibly,  and  I, 
for  one,  am  heartily  glad  O'Connell  has  been  found  guilty  and 
imprisoned.  He  was  either  in  earnest  about  Repeal  or  he  was  not. 
If  he  was  in  earnest,  I  entirely  agree  with  Lord  Grey  and  Lord 
Spencer,  that  civil  war  is  preferable  to  Repeal.  Much  as  I  hate 
wounds,  dangers,  privations,  and  explosions  —  much  as  I  love 
regular  hours  of  dinner — foolish  as  I  think  men  covered  with 
the  feathers  of  the  male  Pullus  domesticus,  and  covered  with  lace 
in  the  course  of  the  ischiatic  nerve — much  as  I  detest  all  these 
folHes  and  ferocities,  I  would  rather  turn  soldier  myself  than 
acquiesce  quietly  in  such  a  separation  of  the  empire. 

It  is  such  a  piece  of  nonsense,  that  no  man  can  have  any  rever- 
ence for  himself  who  would  stop  to  discuss  such  a  question.  It  is 
such  a  piece  of  anti-British  villany,  that  none  but  the  bitterest 
enemy  of  our  blood  and  people  could  entertain  such  a  project ! 
It  is  to  be  met  only  with  round  and  grape  —  to  be  answered  by 
Shrapnel  and  Congreve ;  to  be  discussed  in  hollow  squares,  and 
refuted  by  battalions  four  deep ;  to  be  put  down  by  the  ultima 
ratio  of  that  armed  Aristotle,  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 

O'Connell  is  released ;  and  released,  I  have  no  doubt,  by  the 
conscientious  decision  of  the  law  lords.  If  he  was  unjustly  (even 
from  some  technical  defect)  imprisoned,  I  rejoice  in  his  liberation. 
England  is,  I  believe,  the  only  country  in  the  world  where  such  an 
event  could  have  happened,  and  a  wise  Irishman  (if  there  be  a 
wise  Irishman)  should  be  slow  in  separating  from  a  country  whose 
spirit  can  produce,  and  whose  institutions  can  admit,  of  such  a 
result.  Of  his  guilt  no  one  doubts,  but  guilty  men  must  be  hung 
technically  and  according  to  established  rules ;  upon  a  statutable 
gibbet,  with  parliament  rope,  and  a  legal  hangman,  sheriff,  and 
chaplain  on  the  scaffold,  and  a  mob  in  the  foreground. 

But,  after  all,  I  have  no  desire  my  dear  Daniel  should  come  to 
any  harm,  for  I  believe  there  is  a  great  deal  of  virtue  and  excel- 
lent meaning  in  him,  and  I  must  now  beg  a  few  minutes'  conversa- 
tion with  him.  "  After  all,  my  dear  Daniel,  what  is  it  you  want  ? 
— a  separation  of  the  two  countries?  —  for  what  purpose  ?  —  for 


366  ERIN   GO   BRAGH! 

your  own  aggrandizement? — for  the  gratification  of  your  personal 
vanity?  You  don't  know  yourself;  you  are  much  too  honourable 
and  moral  a  man,  and  too  clearsighted  a  person  for  such  a  business 
as  this  :  the  empire  will  be  twisted  out  of  your  hands  by  a  set  of 
cut-throat  villains,  and  you  will  die  secretly  by  a  poisoned  potato, 
or  be  pistoUed  in  the  streets.  You  have  too  much  sense,  and 
taste,  and  openness,  to  endure  for  a  session,  the  stupid  and  auda- 
cious wickedness  and  nonsense  of  your  associates.  If  you  want 
fame,  you  must  be  insatiable !  Who  is  so  much  known  in  all  Eu- 
rope, or  so  much  admired  by  honest  men  for  the  real  good  you  had 
done  to  your  country,  before  this  insane  cry  of  Repeal  ?  And 
don't  imagine  you  can  intimidate  this  government ;  whatever  be 
their  faults  or  merits,  you  may  take  my  word  for  it,  you  will  not 
intimidate  them.  They  will  prosecute  you  again,  and  put  down 
your  Clontarf  meetings,  and  they  will  be  quite  right  in  doing  so. 
They  may  make  concessions,  and  I  think  they  will ;  but  they  would 
fall  into  utter  contempt,  if  they  allowed  themselves  to  be  terrified 
into  a  dissolution  of  the  Union.  They  know  full  well  that  the  En- 
jrlish  nation  arc  unanimous  and  resolute  upon  this  point,  and  that 
they  would  prefer  war  to  a  Repeal.  And  now,  dear  Daiiiei,  sit 
down  quietly  at  Derrynane,  and  tell  me,  when  the  bodily  frame  is 
refreshed  with  the  wine  of  Bordeaux,  whether  all  this  is  worth 
while.  What  is  the  object  of  all  government  ?  The  object  of  all 
government  is  roast  mutton,  potatoes,  claret,  a  stout  constable,  an 
honest  justice,  a  clear  highway,  a  free  chapel.  What  trash  to  be 
bawling  in  the  sti-eets  about  the  Green  Isle,  the  Isle  of  the  Ocean ! 
the  bold  anthem  of  Erin  go  Bragh  !  A  far  better  anthem  would 
be  Ei-in  go  bread  and  cheese,  Erin  go  cabins  that  will  keep  out 
the  rain,  Erin  go  pantaloons  without  holes  in  them !  What  folly 
to  be  making  eternal  declamations  about  governing  yourselves  !  If 
laws  are  good  and  well  administered,  is  it  Avorth  while  to  rush  into 
war  and  rebellion,  in  order  that  no  better  laws  may  be  made  in 
another  place  ?  Ai-e  you  an  Eton  boy,  who  has  just  come  out,  full 
of  Plutarch's  Lives,  and  considering  in  every  case  how  Epaminon- 
das  or  Philopoemen  would  have  acted,  or  are  you  our  own  dear 
Daniel,  drilled  in  all  the  business  and  bustle  of  life  ?  I  am  with 
you  heart  and  soul  in  my  detestation  of  all  injustice  done  to  Ire- 
land. Your  priests  shall  be  fed  and  paid,  the  liberties  of  your 
Church  be  scrupulously  guarded,  and  in  civil  affairs  the  most  even 


PAYING   THE   CLERGY.  367 

justice  be  preserved  between  Catholic  and  Protestant.  Thus  far 
I  am  a  thorough  rebel  as  well  as  yourself;  but  when  you  come  to 
the  perilous  nonsense  of  Repeal^  in  common  with  every  honest  man 
who  has  five  grains  of  common  sense,  I  take  my  leave." 

It  is  entertaining  enough,  that  although  the  Ii-ish  are  beginning 
to  be  so  clamorous  about  making  their  own  laws,  that  the  wisest 
and  the  best  statutes  in  the  books  have  been  made  since  their  union 
with  England.  All  Catholic  disabilities  have  been  abolished ;  a 
good  police  has  been  established  all  over  the  kingdom;  public 
courts  of  petty  sessions  have  been  instituted ;  free  trade  between 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland  has  been  completely  carried  into  effect ; 
loi'd  lieutenants  are  placed  in  every  county  ;  church-rates  are  taken 
off  Catholic  shoulders  ;  the  county  grand  jury  rooms  are  flung  open 
to  the  public  ;  county  surveyors  are  of  great  service  ;  a  noble  pro- 
vision is  made  for  educating  the  people.  I  never  saw  a  man  who 
had  returned  to  Ireland  after  four  or  five  years'  absence,  who  did 
not  say  how  much  it  had  improved,  and  how  fast  it  was  improving ; 
and  this  is  the  country  which  is  to  be  Erin-go-bra gh'd  by  this  shal- 
low, vain,  and  irritable  people  into  bloodshed  and  rebellion  ! 

The  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  pay  the  priests,  and  after  a  little 
time  they  will  take  the  money.  One  man  wants  to  repair  his  cot- 
tage ;  another  wants  a  buggy ;  a  third  cannot  shut  his  eyes  to  the 
dilapidations  of  a  cassock.  The  draft  is  payable  at  sight  in  Dub- 
lin, or  by  agents  in  the  next  market  town  dependent  upon  the  com- 
mission in  Dublin.  The  housekeeper  of  the  holy  man  is  importu- 
nate for  money,  and  if  it  is  not  procured  by  drawing  for  the  salary, 
it  must  be  extorted  by  curses  and  comminations  from  the  ragged 
worshippers,  slowly,  sorrowfully,  and  sadly.  There  will  be  some 
opposition  at  first,  but  the  facility  of  getting  the  salary  without  the 
violence  they  are  now  forced  to  use,  and  the  difficulties  to  Avhich 
they  are  exposed  in  procuring  the  payment  of  those  emoluments 
to  which  they  are  fairly  entitled,  will,  in  the  end,  overcome  all  ob- 
stacles.*    And  if  it  does  not  succeed,  what  harm  is  done  by  the 

*  Smith  had  a  conversation  with  Dr.  Doyle,  at  a  time  he  was  anxious  to 
learn  as  far  as  possible  what  effect  the  measures  he  was  proposing  would  have 
upon  the  Catholics.  He  proposed  that  Government  should  pay  the  Catholic 
priests.  "  They  would  not  take  it,"  said  Dr.  Doyle.  "  Do  you  mean  to  say, 
that  if  every  priest  in  Ireland  received  to-morrow  morniwj  a  Government  letter 
with  a  hundred  pounds,  fikst  quarter  of  their  yearns  income,  they  would  le- 


GG8  TENAXTLESS    PEWS. 

attempt  ?  It  evinces  on  the  part  of  this  country  the  strongest  dis- 
position to  do  what  is  just,  and  to  apply  tlie  hest  remedy  to  the 
greatest  evil ;  but  the  very  attempt  would  do  good,  and  would  be 
felt  in  the  great  Catholic  insurrection,  come  when  it  will.  All  re- 
bellions and  disaffections  are  general  and  terrible  in  proportion  as 
one  party  has  suffered,  and  tlie  other  inflicted ;  any  great  measure 
of  conciliation,  proj^osed  in  the  spirit  of  kindness,  is  remembered, 
and  renders  war  less  terrible,  and  opens  avenues  to  peace. 

The  Roman  Catholic  priest  could  not  refuse  to  draw  his  salary 
from  the  state  without  incurring  the  indignation  of  his  flock. 
"  "Why  are  you  to  come  upon  us  for  all  this  money,  when  you  can 
ride  over  to  Sligo  or  Belfast,  and  draw  a  draft  upon  governiv./nt 
for  the  amount  ?"  It  is  not  easy  to  give  a  satisfactoiy  answer  to 
this,  to  a  shrewd  man  who  is  starving  to  death. 

Of  course,  in  talking  of  a  government  payment  to  the  Catholic 
priest,  I  mean  it  should  be  done  with  the  utmost  fairness  and  good 
faith  ;  no  attem.pt  to  gain  patronage,  or  to  make  use  of  the  pope  as 
a  stalking-horse  for  playing  tricks.  Leave  the  patronage  exactly 
as  you  find  it ;  and  take  the  greatest  possible  care  that  the  Catho- 
lic clergy  have  no  reason  to  suspect  you  in  this  particular  ;  do  it 
like  a  gentleman,  without  shuffling  and  prevarication,  or  leave  it 
alone  altogether. 

The  most  important  step  in  improvement  which  mankind  ever 
made,  was  the  secession  from  the  see  of  Rome,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Protestant  religion ;  but  though  I  have  the  sincerest 
admiration  of  the  Protestant  faith  I  have  no  admiration  of  Prot- 
estant hassocks  on  which  there  are  no  knees,  nor  of  seats  on 
which  there  is  no  superincumbent  Protestant  pressure,  nor  of 
whole  acres  of  tenantless  Protestant  pews,  in  which  no  human 
being  of  the  five  hundred  sects  of  Christians  is  ever  seen.  I  have 
no  passion  for  sacred  emptiness,  or  pious  vacuity.  The  emoluments 
of  those  livings  in  which  there  are  few  or  no  Protestants,  ought, 
after  the  death  of  the  present  incumbents,  to  be  appropriated  in 
part  to  the  uses  of  the  predominant  religion,  or  some  arrangements 
made  for  superseding  such  utterly  useless  ministers  immediately 
securing  to  them  the  emoluments  they  possess. 

Can  any  honest  man  say,  that  in  parishes  (as  is  the  case  fre- 

fuse  it?"  "  Ah,  Mr.  Smith,"  said  Dr.  Doyle,  "you've  such  awayof  puttinjj 
things'" — Lady  Holland's  Memoir,  p.  276. 


1 


TITHES.  SG9 

qt'.eiitly  in  Ireland)  coiituiuinp:  3000  or  4000  Catholic's  find  40  or 
/iO  Protestants,  there  is  the  smallest  chance  of  the  majority  being 
converted  ?  Are  not  the  Catholics  (except  in  the  Kortli  of  Ire- 
land, where  the  great  mass  are  Presbyterians)  gaining  everywhere 
(in  the  Protestants  ?  The  tithes  were  originally  possessed  by  the 
Catholic  Church  of  Ireland."  Not  one  shilling  of  them  is  now 
devoted  to  that  purpose.  An  immense  majority  of  the  common 
people  are  Catholics  ;  they  see  a  church  richly  supported  by  the 
spoils  of  their  own  church  establishments,  in  whose  tenets  not  one 
tenth  part  of  the  people  believe.  Is  it  possible  to  believe  this  can 
endure? — that  a  light,  irritable,  priest-ridden  people  will  not, 
under  such  circumstances,  always  remain  at  the  very  eve  of  re- 
bellion, always  ready  to  explode  when  the  finger  of  Daniel  touches 
the  hair  trigger? — for  Daniel,  be  it  said,  though  he  hates  shedding 
blood  in  small  quantities,  has  no  objection  to  provoking  kindred 
nations  to  war.  He  very  properly  objects  to  killing  or  being 
killed  by  Lord  Alvanly ;  but  would  urge  on  ten  thousand  Pats  in 
civil  combat  against  ten  thousand  Bulls.  His  objections  are  to 
small  homicides ;  and  his  vow  that  he  has  registered  in  Heaven  is 
only  against  retail  destruction,  and  murder  by  piecemeal.  He 
does  not  like  to  teaze  Satan  by  driblets ;  but  to  earn  eternal  tor- 
ments by  persuading  eight  million  Irish,  and  twelve  million  Britons 
no  longer  to  buy  and  sell  oats  and  salt  meat,  but  to  butcher  each 
other  in  God's  name  to  extermination.  And  what  if  Daniel  dies, 
of  what  use  bis  death  ?  Does  Daniel  make  the  occasion,  or  does 
the  occasion  make  Daniel?  —  Daniels  are  made  by  the  bigotry 
and  insolence  of  England  to  Ireland ;  and  till  the  monstrous 
abuses  of  the  Protestant  Church  in  that  country  are  rectified,  there 
will  always  he  Daniels,  and  they  will  always  come  out  of  their 
dens  more  powerful  and  more  popular  than  when  you  cast  them  in. 
I  do  not  mean  by  this  unjustly  and  cowardly  to  run  down 
O'Connell.  He  has  been  of  eminent  service  to  his  country  in  the 
qnestion  of  Catholic  Emancipation,  and  I  am  by  no  means  satis- 
fied that  with  the  gratification  of  vanity  there  are  not  mingled 
genuine  feelings  of  patriotism  and  a  deep  sense  of  the  injustice 
done  to  his  country.  His  first  success,  however,  flung  him  off  his 
guar 3 ;  and  perhaps  he  trusted  too  much  in  the  timidity  of  the 
present  government,  who  are  by  no  means  composed  of  irresolute 
or  weak  men. 

IG* 


870  JOINYILLE. 

If  I  thought  Ii  eland  quite  safe,  I  should  still  object  to  injustice. 
I  could  never  endure  in  silence  that  the  Catholic  Church  of  Ire- 
land should  be  left  in  its  present  state  ;  but  I  am  afraid  France 
and  England  can  now  afford  to  fight ;  and  having  saved  u  little 
money,  they  will,  of  course,  spend  it  in  fighting.  That  puppy  of 
the  waves,  young  Joinville,  will  steam  over  in  a  high-pressure 
fleet!  —  and  then  comes  an  immense  twenty  per  cent,  income-tax 
war,  a  universal  insurrection  in  Ireland,  and  a  crisis  of  misery 
and  distress,  in  Avhich  life  will  hardly  be  worth  having.  The 
struggle  may  end  in  our  favour,  but  it  may  not;  and  the  object  of 
political  wisdom  is  to  avoid  these  struggles.  I  want  to  see  jolly 
Roman  Catholic  priests  secure  of  their  income  without  any  motive 
for  sedition  or  turbulence.  I  want  to  see  Patricks  at  the  loom ; 
cotton  and  silk  factories  springing  up  in  the  bogs ;  Ireland  a  rich, 
happy,  quiet  country!  —  scribbling,  carding,  cleaning,  and  making 
calico,  as  if  mankind  had  only  a  few  days  more  allotted  to  them 
for  making  clothes,  and  were  ever  after  to  remain  stark  naked. 

Remember  that  between  your  impending  and  your  past  wars 
with  Ireland  there  is  this  remarkable  difference.  You  have  given 
up  your  Protestant  auxiliaries ;  the  Protestants  enjoyed  in  for- 
mer disputes  all  the  patronage  of  Ireland ;  they  fought  not  only 
from  religious  hatred,  but  to  preserve  their  monopoly  ;  —  that  mo- 
nopoly is  gone ;  you  have  been  candid  and  just  for  thirty  years, 
and  have  lost  those  friends  whose  swords  were  always  ready 
to  defend  the  partiality  of  the  government  and  to  stifle  the  cry  of 
justice.  The  next  war  will  not  be  between  Catholic  and  Protest- 
ant, but  between  Ireland  and  England. 

I  have  some  belief  in  Sir  Robert.  He  is  a  man  of  great  under- 
standing, and  must  see  that  this  eternal  O'Connelling  will  never 
do,  that  it  is  impossible  it  can  last.  "We  are  in  a  transition  state, 
and  the  Tories  may  be  assured  that  the  baronet  will  not  go  too 
fast.  If  Peel  tells  them  that  the  thing  must  be  done,  they  may 
be  sure  it  is  high  time  to  do  it;  —  they  may  retreat  mournfully  and 
sullenly  before  common  justice  and  common  sense,  but  retreat 
they  must  when  Tamworth  gives  the  word — and  in  quick-step 
too,  and  without  loss  of  time. 

And  let  me  beg  of  my  dear  Ultras  not  to  imagine  that  they 
survive  for  a  single  instant  without  Sir  Robert — that  they  could 
form  anultra-tory  administration.     Is  there  a  Chartist  in  Great 


DIPLOMATIC  ENGAGEMENTS.  371 

Britain  who  would  not,  upon  the  first  intimation  of  such  an  attempt, 
order  a  new  suit  of  clotlies,  and  call  upon  the  baker  and  milkman 
for  an  extended  credit  ?  Is  there  a  political  reasoner  who  would 
not  come  out  of  his  he  le  with  a  new  constitution  ?  Is  thei-e  one 
ravenous  rogue  who  would  not  be  looking  for  his  prey  ?  Is  there 
one  honest  man  of  common  sense  Avho  does  not  see  that  universal 
disaffection  and  civil  war  would  follow  from  the  blind  fury,  the 
childish  prejudices  and  the  deep  ignorance  of  such  a  sect?  I 
have  a  high  opinion  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  but  he  must  summon  up 
all  his  political  courage,  and  do  sometliing  next  session  for  the  pay- 
ment of  the  Roman  Catholic  priests.  He  must  run  some  risk  of 
shocking  public  opinion ;  no  greater  risk,  however,  than  he  did  in 
Catholic  Emancipation.  I  am  sure  the  Whigs  would  be  true  to 
him,  and  I  tliink  I  observe  that  very  many  obtuse  country  gentle- 
men are  alarmed  by  the  state  of  Ireland,  and  the  hostility  of 
France  and  America. 

Give  what  you  please  to  the  Catholic  priests,  habits  are  not 
broken  in  a  day.  There  must  be  time  as  well  as  justice,  but  in 
the  end  these  things  have  their  effect.  A  buggy,  a  house,  some 
field  near  it,  a  decent  income  paid  quarterly ;  in  the  long  run 
these  are  the  cures  of  sedition  and  disaffection ;  men  don't  quit  the 
common  business  of  life,  and  join  bitter  political  parties,  unless 
they  have  something  justly  to  complain  of. 

But  where  is  the  money  —  about  £400,000  per  annum  —  to 
come  from  ?  Out  of  the  pockets  of  the  best  of  men.  Mi'.  Thomas 
Grenville,  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  bishops,  of  Sir  Robert  Inglis, 
and  all  other  men  who  pay  all  other  taxes ;  and  never  will  public 
money  be  so  well  and  wisely  employed ! 

It  turns  out  that  there  is  no  law  to  prevent  entering  into  diplo- 
matic engagements  with  the  pope.  The  sooner  we  become  ac- 
quainted with  a  gentleman  who  has  so  much  to  say  to  eight  mil- 
lions of  our  subjects,  the  better  !  Can  anything  be  so  childish  and 
absurd  as  a  horror  of  communicating  with  the  pope,  and  all  the 
hobgoblins  we  have  imagined  of  premunires  and  outlawries  for 
this  contraband  trade  in  piety  ?  Our  ancestors  (strange  to  say, 
wiser  than  ourselves),  have  left  us  to  do  as  we  please,  and  the  sooner 
government  do  what  they  can  do  legally,  the  better.  A  thousand 
opportunities  of  doing  good  in  Irish  affairs  have  been  lost,  from 
our  havins  no  avowed  and  dignified  agent  at  the  Court  of  Rome. 


372  ECCLESIASTICAL    PAYMENTS. 

If  it  depended  upon  me,  I  would  send  the  Duke  of  Devonsliire 
there  to-morrow,  with  nine  chaplains  and  several  tons  of  Protes- 
tant theology.  I  have  no  love  of  popery,  but  the  pope  is  at  all 
events  better  than  the  idol  of  Juggernaut,  whose  chaplains  I  be- 
lieve we  pay,  and  whose  chariot  I  dare  say  is  made  in  Long 
Acre.  We  pay  £10,000  a  year  to  our  ambassador  at  Constanti- 
nople, and  are  startled  with  the  idea  of  communicating  diplomati- 
cally with  Rome,  deeming  the  Sultan  a  better  Christian  than  the 
pope ! 

The  mode  of  exacting  clerical  dues  in  Ireland  is  quite  arbitrary 
and  capricious.  Uniformity  is  out  of  the  question  ;  everything  de- 
pends on  the  disposition  and  temper  of  the  clergyman.  There  are 
salutary  regulations  put  forth  in  each  diocese  respecting  church 
dues  and  church  discipline,  and  put  forth  by  Episcojial  and  synod- 
ical  authority.  Specific  sums  are  laid  down  for  mass,  marriage, 
and  the  administration  of  the  Eucharist.  These  authorized  pay- 
ments are  moderate  enough,  but  every  priest,  in  spite  of  these 
rules,  makes  the  most  he  can  of  his  ministry,  and  the  strangest  dis- 
crepancy prevails,  even  in  the  same  diocese,  in  the  demands  made 
upon  the  people.  The  priest  and  his  flock  are  continually  coming 
into  collision  on  pecuniary  matters.  Twice  a  year  the  holy  man 
collects  confession  money  under  the  denomination  of  Christmas 
and  Easter  offerings.  He  selects,  in  every  neighbourhood,  one  or 
two  houses  in  which  he  holds  stations  of  confession.  Very  disa- 
greeable scenes  take  place  when  additional  money  is  demanded,  or 
when  additional  time  for  payment  is  craved.  The  first  thing  done 
when  there  is  a  question  of  marrying  a  couple  is,  to  make  a  har- 
gain  about  the  marriage  money.  The  wary  minister  w^atches  the 
palpitations,  puts  on  a  shilling  for  every  sigh,  and  two-pence  on 
every  tear,  and  maddens  the  impetuosity  of  the  young  lovers  up 
to  a  pound  sterling.  The  remuneration  prescribed  by  the  diocesan 
statutes,  is  never  thought  of  for  a  moment ;  the  priest  makes  as 
hard  a  bargain  as  he  can,  and  the  bed  the  poor  peasants  are  to 
lie  upon  is  sold,  to  make  their  concubinage  lawful; — but  every 
one  present  at  the  marriage  is  to  contribute; — the  ministei',  after 
begging  and  entreating  some  time  to  little  purpose,  gets  into  a  vio- 
lent rage,  abuses  and  is  abused;  —  and  in  this  way  is  celebrated 
one  of  the  sacraments  of  the  Catholic  Church!  —  The  same  scenes 
of  altercation  and  abuse  tak^-  place  when  gossip-money  is  refused 


IRISH    CHUIICH    SUPPORT.  373 

at  baptisms ;  but  the  most  painful  scenes  take  place  at  extreme 
unction,  a  ceremony  t ;  Avliich  the  common  people  in  Ireland  attach 
the  utmost  importance.  "  Pay  me  beforehand — this  is  not  enough 
—  I  insist  upon  mire,  I  know  you  can  afford  it,  I  insist  upon  a 
larger  fee !" — and  all  this  before  the  dying  man,  who  feels  he  has 
not  an  hour  to  live !  and  believes  that  salvation  depends  upon  the 
timely  application  of  this  sacred  grease. 

Other  bad  consequences  arise  out  of  the  present  system  of  Irish 
Church  support.  INIany  Qf  the  clergy  are  constantly  endeavouring 
to  overreach  and  undermine  one  another.  Every  man  looks  to  his 
own  private  emolument,  regardless  of  all  covenants,  expressed  or 
implied.  The  curate  does  not  make  a  fair  return  to  the  parish 
priest,  nor  the  parish  priest  to  the  curate.  There  is  a  universal 
scramble!  —  every  one  gets  what  he  can,  and  seems  to  think  he 
would  be  almost  justified  in  appropriating  the  whole  to  himself. 
And  how  can  all  this  be  otherwise  ?  How  are  the  poor,  wretched 
clergy  to  live,  but  by  setting  a  high  price  on  their  theological  la- 
bours, and  using  every  incentive  of  fear  and  superstition  to  extort 
from  six  millions  of  beggars  the  little  payments  wanted  for  the 
bodies  of  the  poor,  and  the  support  of  life !  I  maintain  that  it  is 
shocking  and  wicked  to  leave  the  religious  guides  of  six  millions  of 
people  in  such  a  state  of  destitution  !  —  to  bestow  no  more  thought 
upon  them  than  upon  the  clergy  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  !  If  I 
were  a  member  of  the  cabinet,  and  met  my  colleagues  once  a  week, 
to  eat  birds  and  beasts,  and  to  talk  over  the  state  of  the  world,  I 
should  begin  upon  Ireland  before  the  soup  was  finished,  go  on 
through  fish,  turkey,  and  saddle  of  mutton,  and  never  end  till  the 
last  thimbleful  of  claret  had  passed  down  the  throat  of  the  incred- 
ulous Haddington  :  but  there  they  sit,  week  after  week  ;  there  they 
come,  week  after  week  ;  the  Piccadilly  Mars,  the  Scotch  Neptune, 
Themis  Lyndhurst,  the  Tamworth  baronet,  dear  Goody,  and  dearer 
Gladdy,*  and  think  no  more  of  paying  the  Cathohc  clergy,  than  a 
man  of  real  fashion  does  of  paying  his  tailor !  And  there  is  no 
excuse  for  this  in  fanaticism.  There  is  only  one  man  in  the 
cabinet  who  objects  from  reasons  purely  fanatical,  because  the 
Pope  is  the  Scarlet  Lady,  or  the  Seventh  Vial,  or  the  Little  Horn. 
All  the  rest  are  entirely  of  opinion  that  it  ought  to  be  done  —  that 
it  is  the  one  thing  needful ;  but  they  are  afraid  of  bishops  and 
*  Lord  Gloderich  and  the  Right  Hon.  William  Ewart  Gladstone. 


374  LIVINGS. 

county  meetings,  newspapers,  and  pamphlets,  and  reviews  ;  all  fair 
enough  objects  of  apprehension,  but  they  must  be  met,  and  en- 
countered, and  put  down.  It  is  impossible  that  the  subject  can  be 
much  longer  avoided,  and  that  every  year  is  to  produce  a  deadly 
struggle  with  the  people,  and  a  long  trial  in  time  of  peace  with  O' 
somebody,  the  patriot  for  the  time  being,  or  the  general,  perhaps, 
in  time  of  a  foreign  war. 

If  I  were  a  bishop,  living  beautifully  in  a  state  of  serene  pleni- 
tude, I  don't  think  I  could  endure  the  thought  of  so  many  honest, 
pious,  and  laborious  clergymen  of  another  faith,  placed  in  such 
disgraceful  circumstances  !  I  could  not  get  into  my  carriage  with 
jelly-springs,  or  see  my  two  courses  every  day,  without  remem- 
bering the  buggy  and  the  bacon  of  some  poor  old  Catholic  bishop, 
.en  times  as  laborious,  and  with  much  more,  perhaps,  of  theological 
learning  than  myself,  often  distressed  for  a  few  pounds  !  and  bur- 
thened  with  duties  utterly  disproportioned  to  his  age  and  strength. 
I  think,  if  the  extreme  comfort  of  my  own  condition  did  not  ex- 
tinguish all  feeling  for  others,  I  should  sharply  commiserate  such  a 
church,  and  attempt  with  ardour  and  perseverance  to  apj^ly  the 
proper  remedy.  Now  let  us  bi'ing  names  and  well-known  scenes 
before  the  English  reader,  to  give  him  a  clearer  notion  of  what 
passes  in  Catholic  Ireland.  The  living  of  St.  George's,  Hanover 
Square,  is  a  benefice  of  about  £1500  per  annum,  and  a  good  house. 
It  is  in  the  possession  of  Dr.  Hodgson,  who  is  also  Dean  of  Car- 
lisle, worth,  I  believe,  about  £1500  more.  A  more  comfortable 
existence  can  hardly  be  conceived.  Dr.  Hodgson  is  a  very  worthy, 
amiable  man,  and  I  am  very  glad  he  is  as  rich  as  he  is :  but  sup- 
pose he  had  no  revenues  but  what  he  got  off  his  own  bat  —  sup- 
pose that  instead  of  tumbling  through  the  skylight,  as  his  income 
now  does,  it  was  procured  by  Catholic  methods.  The  Doctor  tells 
Mr.  Thompson  he  will  not  marry  him  to  Miss  Simpson  under 
£30  ;  Thompson  demurs,  and  endeavours  to  beat  him  down.  The 
Doctor  sees  Miss  Simpson ;  finds  her  very  pretty ;  thinks  Thomp- 
son hasty,  and  after  a  long  and  undignified  negotiation,  the  Doctor 
gets  his  fee.  Soon  after  this  he  receives  a  message  from  Place, 
the  tailor,  to  come  and  anoint  him  with  extreme  unction.  He  re- 
pairs to  the  bed-side,  and  tells  Mr.  Place  that  he  will  not  touch  him 
under  a  suit  of  clothes,  equal  to  £10  :  the  family  resist,  the  alter- 
cation goes  on  before  the  perishing  artisan,  the  price  is  reduced  to 


A    REAL   BISHOP.  375 

£8,  and  Mr.  Place  is  oile  1.  On  the  ensuing  Sunday  the  child  of 
Lord  B.  is  to  be  christened ;  the  godfathers  and  godmothers  will 
only  give  a  sovereign  each ;  the  Doctor  refuses  to  do  it  for  the 
money,  and  the  church  is  a  scene  of  clamour  and  confusion.  These 
ai'e  the  scenes  -svhich,  under  similar  circumstances,  would  take 
place  here,  for  the  congregation  want  the  comforts  of  religion  with- 
out fees,  and  will  cheat  the  clergyman  if  they  can  ;  and  the  clergy- 
man who  means  to  live,  must  meet  all  these  artifices  with  stern  re- 
sistance. And  this  is  the  wretched  state  of  the  Irish  Roman  Cath- 
olic clergy!  —  a  miserable  blot  and  stain  on  the  English  nation 
Wliat  a  blessing  to  this  country  would  a  real  bishop  be  !  A  man 
who  thought  it  the  first  duty  of  Christianity  to  allay  the  bad  pas- 
sions of  mankind,  and  to  reconcile  contending  sects  with  each 
other.  What  peace  and  happiness  such  a  man  as  the  Bishop  of 
London  might  have  conferi'ed  on  the  empire,  if,  instead  of  chan- 
ging black  dresses  for  white  dresses,  and  administering  to  the  frivo- 
lous disputes  of  foolish  zealots,  he  had  laboured  to  abate  the  hatred 
of  Protestants  for  the  Roman  Catholics,  and  had  dedicated  his 
powerful  understanding  to  promote  religious  peace  in  the  two 
countries.  Scarcely  any  bishop  is  sufficiently  a  man  of  the  world 
to  deal  with  fanatics.  The  way  is  not  to  reason  with  them,  but  to 
ask  them  to  dinner.  They  are  armed  against  logic  and  remon- 
strance, but  they  are  puzzled  in  a  labyrinth  of  wines,  disarmed  by 
facilities  and  concessions,  introduced  to  a  new  Avorld,  come  away 
thinking  more  of  hot  and  cold,  and  dry  and  sweet,  than  of  Newman, 
Keble,  and  Pusey.  So  mouldered  away  Hannibal's  army  at  Capua ! 
So  the  primitive  and  perpendicular  prig  of  Puseyism  is  softened 
into  pi-actical  wisdom,  and  coaxed  into  common  sense.  Providence 
gives  us  generals,  and  admirals,  and  chancellors  of  the  exchequer ; 
but  I  never  remember  in  my  time  a  real  bishop  —  a  grave,  elderly 
man,  full  of  Greek,  with  sound  views  of  the  middle  voice  and  pre- 
terperfect  tense,  gentle  and  kind  to  his  poor  clergy,  of  powerful 
and  commanding  eloquence ;  in  Parliament  never  to  be  put  down 
when  the  great  interests  of  mankind  were  concerned ;  leaning  to 
the  government  when  it  was  right,  leaning  to  the  people  when 
they  were  right ;  feehng  that  the  Spirit  of  God  had  called  him  to 
that  high  office,  he  was  called  for  no  mean  purpose,  but  rather 
that,  seeing  clearly  and  acting  boldly,  and  intending  purely,  he 
might  confer  lasting  benefits  upon  mankind. 


B76  STATE   PAYMENT. 

We  consider  the  Irish  clergy  as  factious,  and  as  encouraging  the 
bad  anti-British  spirit  of  the  people.  How  can  it  be  otherwibe  ? 
They  live  by  the  people  ;  they  have  nothing  to  live  upon  but  the 
voluntary  oblations  of  the  people  ;  and  they  must  fall  into  the  same 
spirit  as  the  people,  or  they  would  be  starved  to  death.  No  mar- 
riage ;  no  mortuary  masses  ;  no  vmctions  to  the  priest  who  pi'eached 
against  O'Connell ! 

Give  the  clergy  a  maintenance  separate  from  the  will  of  the 
people,  and  you  will  then  enable  them  to  oppose  the  folly  and 
madness  of  the  people.  The  objection  to  the  state  provision  does 
not  really  come  from  the  clergy,  but  from  the  agitators  and  repeal- 
ers :  these  men  see  the  immense  advantage  of  carrying  the  clergy 
with  them  in  their  agitation,  and  of  giving  the  sanction  of  religion 
to  political  hatred ;  they  know  that  the  clergy,  moving  in  the  same 
direction  with  the  people,  have  an  immense  influence  over  them ; 
and  they  are  very  wisely  afraid,  not  only  of  losing  this  co-opera- 
ting power,  but  of  seeing  it,  by  a  state  provision,  arrayed  against 
them.  I  am  fully  convinced  that  a  state  payment  to  the  Catholic 
clergy,  by  leaving  to  that  laborious  and  useful  body  of  men  the 
exercise  of  their  free  judgment,  would  be  the  severest  blow  that 
Irish  agitation  could  receive. 

For  advancing  these  opinions,  I  have  no  doubt  I  shall  be  assailed 
by  Sacerdos,  Vindex,  Latimer,  Vates,  Clericus,  Aruspex,  and  be 
called  atheist,  deist,  democrat,  smuggler,  poacher,  highwayman, 
Unitarian,  and  Edinburgh  Reviewer  !  Still,  /  am  in  the  right — 
and  what  I  say  requires  excuse  for  being  trite  and  obvious,  not  for 
being  mischievous  and  paradoxical.  I  write  for  three  reasons ; 
first,  because  I  really  wish  to  do  good ;  secondly,  because,  if  I 
don't  write,  I  know  nobody  else  will ;  and  thirdly,  because  it  is  the 
nature  of  the  animal  to  Avrite,  and  I  cannot  help  it.  Still,  in  look- 
ing back  I  see  no  reason  to  repent.  "What  I  have  said  ought  to  be 
done,  generally  has  been  done,  but  always  twenty  or  thirty  years 
too  late ;  done,  not,  of  course,  because  I  have  said  it,  but  because 
it  was  no  longer  possible  to  avoid  doing  it.  Human  beings  cling 
to  their  delicious  tyrannies,  and  to  their  exquisite  nonsense,  like  a 
drunkard  to  his  bottle,  and  go  on  till  death  stares  them  in  the  face. 
The  monstrous  state  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland  wiU 
probably  remain  till  some  monstrous  ruin  threatens  the  verv  ex'g*^  ■ 


INFLUENCE   OVER  TETE   PEOPLE.  o77 

ence  of  the  empire,  and  Lambeth  and  Fulham  are  cursed  by  the 
affrighted  people. 

I  have  always  compared  the  Protestant  church  in  Ireland  (and 
I  believe  my  friend,  Thomas  Moore,  stole  the  simile  from  me)  to 
the  institution  of  butchers'  shops  in  all  the  villages  of  our  Indian 
empire.  "  We  will  have  a  butcher's  shop  in  every  village,  and 
you,  Hindoos,  shall  pay  for  it.  We  know  that  many  of  you  do 
not  eat  meat  at  all,  and  that  the  sight  of  beef-steaks  is  particularly 
offensive  to  you ;  but  still,  a  stray  European  may  pass  through 
your  village,  and  want  a  steak  or  a  chop :  the  shop  shall  be  estab- 
lished ;  and  you  shall  pay  for  it."  This  is  English  legislation  for 
Ireland  ! !  There  is  no  abuse  like  it  in  all  Europe,  in  all  Asia,  in 
all  the  discovered  parts  of  Africa,  and  in  all  we  have  heard  of 
Timbuctoo !  It  is  an  error  that  requires  twenty  thousand  armed 
men  for  its  protection  in  time  of  peace ;  which  costs  more  than  a 
million  a  year ;  and  which,  in  the  first  French  war,  in  spite  of  the 
pufiing  and  panting  of  fighting  steamers,  will  and  must  break  out 
into  desperate  rebellion. 

It  is  commonly  said,  if  the  Roman  Catholic  priests  are  paid  by 
the  state,  they  wUl  lose  their  influence  over  their  flocks ;  not  their 
fair  influence — not  that  influence  which  any  wise  and  good  man 
would  wish  to  see  in  all  religions  —  not  the  dependence  of  humble 
ignorance  upon  prudence  and  piety — only  fellowship  in  faction, 
and  fraternity  in  rebellion ;  all  that  will  be  lost.  A  peep-of-day 
clergyman  will  no  longer  preach  to  a  peep-of-day  congregation  — 
a  Wliiteboy  vicar  will  no  longer  lead  the  psalm  to  Whiteboy 
vocalists ;  but  everything  that  is  good  and  wholesome  will  remain. 
This,  however,  is  not  what  the  anti-British  faction  want;  they 
want  all  the  animation  which  piety  can  breathe  into  sedition,  and 
all  the  fury  which  the  priesthood  can  preach  to  diversity  of  faith  : 
and  this  is  what  they  mean  by  a  clergy  losing  their  influence  over 
the  people !  The  less  a  clergyman  exacts  of  his  people,  the  more 
his  payments  are  kept  out  of  sight,  the  less  will  be  the  friction 
with  which  he  exercises  the  functions  of  his  office.  A  poor 
Catholic  may  respect  a  priest  the  more  who  marries,  baptizes,  and 
anoints ;  but  he  respects  him  because  he  associates  with  his  name 
and  character  the  performance  of  sacred  duties,  not  because  he 
exacts  heavy  fees  for  doing  so.  Double  fees  would  be  a  very  doubt- 
ful cure  for  skepticism ;  and  though  we  have  often  seen  the  tenth 


378  EFFECT   OF  PAYMENT. 

of  the  earth's  produce  carted  away  for  the  benefit  of  the  clerg}-- 
man,  we  do  not  remember  any  very  lively  marks  of  satisfaction 
and  delight  which  it  produced  in  the  countenance  of  the  decimated 
person.  I  am  thoroughly  convinced  that  state  payments  to  the 
Catholic  clergy  would  remove  a  thousand  causes  of  hatred  between 
the  priest  and  his  flock,  and  would  be  as  favourable  to  the  increase 
of  his  useful  authority,  as  it  would  be  fatal  to  his  factious  influence 
over  the  pcDple. 


I 


MACKINTOSH.  379 


SIR  JAMES  MACKINTOSH. 


LETTER    ON    THE    CHARACTER    OF    SIR   JAMES    MACKINTOSH.* 

Mt  dear  Sir  :  You  ask  for  some  of  your  late  father's  letters : 
I  am  sorry  to  say  I  have  none  to  send  you.  Upon  principle,  I 
keep  no  letters  except  those  on  business.  I  have  not  a  single 
letter  from  him,  nor  from  any  human  being  in  my  possession. 

The  impression  which  the  great  talents  and  amiable  qualities  of 
your  father  made  upon  me,  will  remain  as  long  as  I  remain. 
When  I  turn  from  living  spectacles  of  stupidity,  ignorance,  and 

*  It  may  assist  the  reader  to  recall  the  chief  facts  of  Mackintosh's  Life.  He 
was  born  in  the  county  of  Inverness,  Scotland,  in  1765.  He  was  educated  at 
Aherdeen  and  in  Edinburgh,  where  he  took  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  medicine 
in  1787.  He  was  called  to  the  English  bar  in  1795;  in  1803  received  the 
honour  of  knighthood,  on  his  appointment  as  Recorder  of  Bombay;  dis- 
charged the  duties  of  that  office,  in  India,  from  1804  till  1811 ;  returned  to 
Britain  in  1812  ;  in  the  following  year  was  elected  Member  of  Parliament  for 
Nairnshire.  In  1818,  he  became  Professor  of  Law  and  General  Politics,  at 
Hayleybury  College,  an  institution  for  the  civil  servants  of  the  East  India 
Company,  and  was,  the  same  year,  chosen  Member  of  Parliament  for  Knares- 
borough,  which  he  continued  to  represent  till  his  death.  He  was  chosen 
Lord-Rector  of  the  University  of  Glasgow  in  182.3,  and  made  Privy-Coun- 
cillor by  Canning,  in  1827.  He  died  in  1832.  His  chief  writings  were  his 
Vindiciie  Gallica;,  a  reply  to  Burke's  Reflections  on  tlie  French  Revolution, 
at  the  age  of  twenty -six,  in  1791 ;  his  Introductory  Discourse  on  the  Law  of 
Nature  and  Nations ;  a  Dissertation  on  the  History  and  Progress  of  Ethical 
Philosophy,  a  History  of  the  early  English  Reigns  for  Lardner's  Cabinet 
Cyclopaidia,  a  Life  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  and  various  articles  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review.  His  Life,  Correspondence,  and  Journals,  were  published  by 
his  son,  Robert  James  Mackintosh,  to  which  work  this  Letter,  by  Sydney 
Smith,  was  an  important  contribution. 


S80  HIS   CONVERSATION. 

malice,  and  wish  to  think  better  of  the  world  —  I  remember  my 
great  and  benevolent  friend  Mackintosh. 

The  first  points  of  chai'acter  which  everybody  noticed  in  him 
were  the  total  absence  of  envy,  hatred,  malice,  and  uncharitable- 
ness.  He  could  not  hate  —  he  did  not  know  how  to  set  about  it. 
The  gall-bladder  was  omitted  in  his  composition,  and  if  he  could 
have  been  persuaded  into  any  scheme  of  revenging  himself  upon 
an  enemy,  I  am  sure  (unless  he  had  been  narrowly  watched)  it 
would  have  ended  in  proclaiming  the  good  qualities,  and  promoting 
the  interests  of  his  adversary.  Tx'uth  had  so  much  more  power 
over  him  than  anger,  that  (whatever  might  be  the  provocation)  he 
could  not  misrepresent,  nor  exaggerate.  In  questions  of  passion 
and  party,  he  stated  facts  as  they  were,  and  reasoned  fairly  upon 
them,  placing  his  happiness  and  pride  in  equitable  discrimination. 
Very  fond  of  talking,  he  heard  patiently,  and,  not  averse  to  intel- 
lectual display,  did  not  forget  that  others  might  have  the  same 
inclination  as  himself. 

Till  subdued  by  age  and  illness,  his  conversation  was  more  bril- 
liant and  instructive  than  that  of  any  human  being  I  ever  had  the 
good  fortune  to  be  acquainted  with.  His  memory  (vast  and  pro- 
digious as  it  was)  he  so  managed  as  to  make  it  a  source  of  pleas- 
ure and  instruction,  rather  than  that  di'eadful  engine  of  colloquial 
oppression  into  which  it  is  sometimes  erected.  He  remembered 
things,  words,  thoughts,  dates,  and  everything  that  was  wanted. 
His  language  was  beautiful,  and  might  have  gone  from  the  fireside 
to  the  press  ;  but  though  his  ideas  were  always  clothed  in  beautiful 
language,  the  clothes  were  sometimes  too  big  for  the  body,  and 
common  thoughts  were  dressed  in  better  and  larger  apparel  than 
they  deserved.  He  certainly  had  this  fault,  but  it  was  not  one  of 
frequent  commission.* 

*  There  is  a  bit  of  humour  in  Smith's  Memoirs  on  this  text.  "Writing  to 
Lord  Ilonand,  in  1826,  he  says  :  "It  struck  me  last  night,  as  I  was  lying  in 
bed,  that  Mackintosh,  if  he  were  to  write  on  pepper,  would  thus  describe  it  • 

" '  Pepper  may  philosophically  be  described  as  a  dusty  and  highly-pul 
verized  seed  of  an  Oriental  fmit ;  an  article  rather  of  condiment  than  diet, 
which,  dispersed  lightly  over  the  surface  of  food,  with  no  other  rule  than  the 
caprice  of  the  consumer,  communicates  pleasure,  rather  than  affords  nutrition  ; 
and,  by  adding  a  tropical  flavour  to  the  gross  and  succulent  viands  of  the 
North,  approximates  the  diflfercnt  regions  of  the  earth,  explains  the  objects 
of  commerce,  and  justifies  the  industry  of  man.'" 


HABIT   OF   EULOGY.  881 

He  had  a  method  of  putt  ng  things  so  mildly  and  interroga- 
tively, that  he  always  procured  the  readiest  reception  for  his  oi)inions. 
Addicted  to  reasoning  in  the  company  of  able  men,  he  had  two 
valuable  habits,  which  are  rarely  met  with  in  great  reasoners — he 
never  broke  in  upon  his  opponent,  and  always  avoided  strong  and 
vehement  assertions.  His  reasoning  commonly  carried  conviction, 
for  he  was  cautious  in  his  positions,  accurate  in  his  deductions, 
aimed  only  at  truth.  The  ingenious  side  was  commonly  taken 
by  some  one  else ;  the  interests  of  truth  wei-e  protected  by  Mack- 
intosh. 

His  good-nature  and  candour  betrayed  him  into  a  morbid  habit 
of  eulogizing  everybody  —  a  habit  which  desti'oyed  the  value  of 
commendations,  that  might  have  been  to  the  young  (if  more  spar- 
ingly distributed)   a  reward  of  virtue  and  a  motive  to  exertion.* 

*  Smitli  hit  off  this  trait  of  his  friend  in  a  parody.  The  following  is  from 
Lady  Holland's  Memoir  :  — 

"  What  a  loss  you  had  in  not  knowing  Mackintosh  !  how  was  it  1 . . .  Yes, 
his  manner  was  cold  ;  his  shake  of  the  hand  came  under  the  genus  '  mortmain ;' 
but  his  heart  was  overflowing  with  benevolence.  I  like  that  simile  I  made  on 
him  in  my  letter,  of  '  a  great  ship  cutting  its  cable  ;'  it  is  fine,  and  it  well 
described  Mackintosh.  His  chief  foible  was  indiscriminate  praise.  I  amused 
myself  the  other  day,'  said  he,  laughing,  '  in  writing  a  termination  of  a 
speech  for  him  ;  would  you  like  to  hear  it  1  I  will  read  it  to  you  :  — 

" '  It  is  impossible  to  conclude  these  observations  without  expressing  the 
obligations  I  am  under  to  a  person  in  a  much  more  humble  scene  of  life  —  I 
mean,  sir,  the  hackney-coachman  by  whom  I  have  been  driven  to  this  meet- 
ing. To  pass  safely  through  the  streets  of  a  crowded  metropolis  must  re- 
quire, on  the  part  of  the  driver,  no  common  assemblage  of  qualities.  He 
must  have  caution  without  timidity,  activity  without  precipitation,  and  courage 
without  rashness  ;  he  must  have  a  clear  perception  of  his  object,  and  a 
dexterous  use  of  his  means.  I  can  safely  say  of  the  individual  in  question, 
that,  for  a  moderate  reward,  he  has  displayed  unwearied  skill ;  and  to 
him  I  shall  never  forget  that  I  owe  unfractured  integrity  of  limb,  exemption 
from  pain,  and  perhaps  prolongation  of  existence. 

"  '  Nor  can  I  pass  over  the  encouraging  cheerfulness  with  which  I  was  re- 
ceived by  the  waiter,  nor  the  useful  blaze  of  light  communicated  by  the  link- 
boys,  as  I  descended  from  the  carriage.  It  was  with  no  common  pleasure  that  I 
remarked  in  these  men,  not  the  mercenary  bustle  of  venal  service,  but  the 
genuine  effusions  of  untutored  benevolence ;  not  the  i-apacity  of  subordinate 
agency,  but  the  alacrity  of  humble  friendship.  What  may  not  be  said  of  a 
country  where  all  the  little  accidents  of  life  bring  forth  the  hidden  qualitica 
of  the  heart  —  where  her  vehicles  are  driven,  her  streets  illumined,  and  her 
bells  answered,  by  men  teeming  with  all  the  refinements  of  civilized  life  1 


382  HUMOUK   AND    WIT. 

Occasionally  he  took  fits  of  an  opposite  nature ;  arid  I  have  seen 
him  abating  and  dissolving  pompous  gentlemen  with  the  most 
successful  ridicule.  He  certainly  had  a  good  deal  of  humour; 
and  I  remember,  amongst  many  other  examples  of  it,  that  he  kept 
us  for  two  or  tlii'ee  hours  in  a  roar  of  laughter,  at  a  dinner-party 
at  his  own  house,  playing  upon  the  simplicity  of  a  Scotch  cousin, 
who  had  mistaken  me  for  my  gallant  synonym,  the  hero  of  Acre. 
I  never  saw  a  more  perfect  comedy,  nor  heard  ridicule  so  long 
and  so  well  sustained.*  Sir  James  had  not  only  humour,  but  he 
had  wit  also ;  at  least,  new  and  sudden  relations  of  ideas  flashed 
across  his  mind  in  reasoning,  and  produced  the  same  effect  as  wit, 
and  would  have  been  called  wit,  if  a  sense  of  their  utility  and  im- 

" '  I  can  not  conclude,  sir,  without  thanking  you  for  the  vciy  clear  and 
distinct  manner  in  which  you  have  announced  the  proposition  on  which  we 
are  to  vote.  It  is  but  common  justice  to  add  that  public  assemblies  rarelj 
witness  articulation  so  perfect,  language  so  select,  and  a  manner  so  eminentlj 
remarkable  for  everything  that  is  kind,  impartial,  and  just.'" 

*  This  was  in  his  early  days  at  London,  about  the  year  1807.  Lady 
Holland  (Memoir,  p.  87)  tells  the  story:  — 

"It  was  on  occasion  of  one  of  these  suppers  that  Sir  James  Mackintosh 
happened  to  bring  with  him  a  raw  Scotch  cousin,  an  ensign  in  a  Highland 
regiment.  On  hearing  the  name  of  his  host  he  suddenly  turned  round,  and, 
nudging  Sir  James,  said  in  an  audible  whisper,  '  Is  that  the  great  Sir  Sud- 
ney  ?'  '  Yes,  yes,'  said  Sir  James,  much  amused ;  and  giving  my  father 
the  hint,  on  the  instant  he  assumed  the  military  character,  performed  the 
pai't  of  the  hero  of  Acre  to  perfection,  fought  all  his  battles  over  again,  and 
showed  how  he  had  charged  the  Turks,  to  the  infinite  delight  of  the  young 
Scotchman,  who  was  quite  enchanted"  with  the  kindness  and  condescension 
of  'the  great  Sir  Sudney,'  as  he  called  him,  and  to  the  absolute  torture  of 
the  other  guests,  who  were  bursting  with  suppressed  laughter  at  the  scene 
before  them.  At  last,  after  an  evening  of  the  most  inimitable  acting  on  the 
part  both  of  my  father  and  Sir  James,  nothing  would  serve  the  young  High- 
lander but  setting  off,  at  twelve  o'clock  at  night,  to  fetch  the  piper  of  his  re- 
giment to  pipe  to  '  the  great  Sir  Sudney,'  who  said  he  had  never  heard  the 
bagpipes,  upon  which  the  whole  party  broke  up  and  dispersed  instantly,  for  Sir 
James  said  his  Scotch  cousin  would  infallibly  cut  his  throat  if  he  discovered 
his  mistake.  A  few  days  afterward,  when  Sir  James  Mackintosh  and  his 
Scotch  cousin  were  walking  in  the  streets,  they  met  my  father  with  my  mother 
on  his  arm.  He  introduced  her  as  his  wife,  upon  which  the  S''Otch  cousin 
said  in  a  low  voice  to  Sir  James,  and  looking  at  my  mother,  '  I  did  na  ken 
the  great  Sir  Sudney  was  married.'  '  Why,  no,'  said  Sir  James,  a  little  em- 
barrassed and  winking  at  him,  'not  ex- act-ly  married  —  only  an  Egyptian 
slave  he  brought  over  with  him  ;  Fatin  a  —  you  know — you  understand.' 
My  mother  was  long  known  in  the  little  circle  as  Fatima." 


RED  TAPE.  383 

portance  had  not  often  overpowered  the  admiration  of  noveUj, 
and  entitled  them  to  the  higher  name  of  wisdom.  Then  the  great 
thoughts  and  fine  sayings  of  the  great  men  of  all  ages  were  inti- 
mately present  to  his  recollection,  and  came  out  dazzling  and  de- 
lighting in  his  conversation.  Justness  of  thinking  was  a  strong 
feature  in  his  understanding ;  he  had  a  head  in  which  nonsense 
and  error  could  hardly  vegetate  :  it  was  a  soil  utterly  unfit  for  them. 
If  his  display  in  conversation  had  been  only  in  maintaining  splen- 
did paradoxes,  he  would  soon  have  wearied  those  he  lived  with ; 
but  no  man  could  live  long  intimately  with  your  father  without 
finding  that  he  was  gaining  upon  doubt,  correcting  error,  enlar- 
ging the  boundaries,  and  strengthening  the  foundations  of  truth. 
It  was  worth  while  to  listen  to  a  master,  whom  not  himself,  but 
nature  had  appointed  to  the  office,  and  who  taught  what  it  was 
not  easy  to  forget,  by  methods  which  it  was  not  easy  to  resist.* 
Curran,  the  master  of  the  rolls,  said  to  Mr.  Grattan,  "You 
would  be  the  greatest  man  of  your  age,  Grattan,  if  you  would  buy 
a  few  yards  of  red  tape,  and  tie  up  your  bills  and  papers."  This 
was  the  fault  or  misfortune  of  your  excellent  father ;  he  never 
knew  the  use  of  red  tape,  and  was  utterly  unfit  for  the  common 
business  of  life.f     That  a  gumea  I'epresented  a  quantity  of  shil- 

*In  1801  Smith  wrote  to  Jeffrey  :  "Notliing  has  pleased  me  more  in  Lon- 
don than  the  convei-sation  of  INIackintosh.  I  never  saw  so  theoretical  a  head 
which  contained  so  much  practical  understanding.  He  has  lived  much  among 
various  men,  with  great  observation,  and  has  always  tried  his  profound  moral 
speculations  by  the  experience  of  life.  He  has  not  contracted  in  the  world  a 
lazy  contempt  for  theorists  nor  in  the  closet  a  peevish  impatience  of  that 
grossness  and  corruptibility  of  mankind,  which  are  ever  marring  the  schemes 
of  secluded  benevolence.  He  does  not  wish  for  the  best  in  politics  or  morals, 
but  for  the  best  which  can  be  attained ;  and  what  that  is  he  seems  to  know 
well.  Now  what  1  object  to  Scotch  philosophers  in  general  is,  that  they 
reason  upon  man  as  they  would  upon  a  divinity ;  they  pursue  truth  without 
caring  if  it  be  useful  truth.  They  are  more  fond  of  disputing  on  mind  and 
matter  than  on  anything  wliich  can  have  a  reference  to  the  real  world,  inhabit- 
ed by  real  men,  women,  and  children ;  a  philosopher  that  descends  to  the 
present  state  of  things  is  debased  in  their  estimation.  Look  among  our 
friends  in  Edinburgli,  and  see  if  there  be  not  some  truth  in  this.  I  do 
not  speak  of  great  prominent  literary  personages,  but  of  the  mass  of 
reflecting  m^n  in  Scotland." 

t  Smith,  writing  to  the  Countess  Grey  of  Mackintosh's  visit  to  Foston 
in  1823,  says  of  his    guest:     "Mackintosh   had   seventy  volumes   in   his 


88-4  STUDIES. 

lings,  and  that  it  would  barter  for  a  quantity  of  clotli,  lie  was  well 
aware ;  but  the  accurate  number  of  the  baser  coin,  or  the  just 
measurement  of  the  manufactured  article,  to  which  he  was  enti- 
tled for  his  gold,  he  could  never  learn,  and  it  Avas  impossible 
to  teach  him.  Hence  his  life  was  often  an  exami-)le  of  the 
ancient  and  melancholy  struggle  of  genius,  with  the  difficulties  of 
existence. 

I  have  often  heard  Sir  James  Mackintosh  say  of  himself,  that 
he  was  born  to  be  the  professor  of  a  university.  Happy,  and  for 
ages  celebrated,  would  have  been  the  university,  which  had  so 
possessed  him,  but  in  this  view  he  was  unjust  to  himself  Still, 
however,  his  style  of  speaking  in  Parliament  was  certainly  more 
academic  than  forensic ;  it  Avas  not  sufficiently  short  and  quick  for 
a  busy  and  impatient  assembly.  He  often  spoke  over  the  heads 
of  his  hearers — Avas  too  much  in  ad\'ance  of  feeling  for  their  sym- 
pathies, and  of  reasoning  for  their  comprehension.  He  began  too 
much  at  the  beginning,  and  went  too  much  to  the  right  and  left  of 
the  question,  making  rather  a  Jecture  or  a  dissertation  than  a 
speech.  His  voice  Avas  bad  and  nasal ;  and  though  nobody  Avas 
m  reality  more  sincere,  he  seemed  not  only  not  to  feel,  but  hardly 
to  think  Avhat  he  was  saying. 

Your  father  had  very  httle  science,  and  no  great  knowledge  of 
physics.  His  notions  of  his  early  pursuit — the  study  of  medicine 
— were  imperfect  and  antiquated,  and  he  was  but  an  indifferent 
classical  scholar,  for  the  Greek  language  has  never  crossed  the 
Tweed  in  any  great  force.  In  history  the  whole  stream  of  time 
was  open  before  him ;  he  had  looked  into  every  moral  and  meta- 
physical question  from  Plato  to  Paley,  and  had  AA'aded  through 
morasses  of  international  law,  where  the  step  of  no  living  man 
could  follow  him.  Political  economy  is  of  modern  invention ;  I 
am  old  enough  to  recollect  Avhen  every  judge  on  the  bench  (Lord 
Eldon  and  Sergeant  Runnington  excepted),  in  their  charges  to 
the  grand  juries,  attributed  the  then  high  prices  of  corn  to  the 
scandalous  combination  of  farmers.  Sir  James  kncAv  Avhat  is 
commonly  agreed  upon  by  political  economists,  without  taking 
much  pleasure  in  the  science,  and  with  a  disposition  to  blame  the 
very  speculative  and  metaphysical  disquisitions  into  Avhich  it  has 

caiTiage !  None  of  the  glasses  would  draw  up  or  let  doAvn,  but  one ;  and 
he  left  his  hat  behind  him  at  our  house." 


INTEGRITY.  885 

wandered,  but  with  a  full  conviction  al^o  (wliicli  many  able 
men  of  his  standing  are  witliout)  of  the  immense  importance  of 
the  science  to  the  welfare  of  society. 

I  think  (though,  perhaps,  some  of  his  friends  may  not  agree 
w^th  me  in  this  opinion)  that  he  was  an  acute  judge  of  character, 
and  of  the  good  as  Avell  as  evil  in  character.  He  was,  in  truth, 
with  the  appearance  of  distraction  and  of  one  occupied  with  other 
things,  a  very  minute  observer  of  human  nature ;  and  I  have  seen 
him  analyze,  to  the  very  springs  of  the  heart,  men  who  had  not 
the  most  distant  suspicion  of  the  sharpness  of  his  vision,  nor  a 
behef  that  he  could  read  anything  but  books. 

SuflBcient  justice  has  not  been  done  to  his  political  integrity. 
He  was  not  rich,  was  from  the  northern  part  of  the  island,  pos- 
sessed great  facility  of  temper,  and  had  therefore  every  excuse 
for  political  lubricity,  which  that  vice  (more  common  in  those  days 
than  I  hope  it  will  ever  be  again)  could  possibly  require.  Invited 
by  every  party,  upon  his  arrival  from  India,  he  remained  stead- 
fast to  his  old  friends  the  whigs,  whose  admission  to  office,  or  en- 
joyment of  pohtical  powei",  would  at  that  period  have  been  con- 
sidered as  the  most  visionary  of  all  human  speculations ;  yet, 
during  his  lifetime,  everybody  seemed  more  ready  to  have  for- 
given the  tergiversation  of  which  he  was  not  guilty,  than .  to 
admire  the  actual  firmness  he  had  displayed.  With  all  this  he 
never  made  the  slightest  efibrts  to  advance  his  interests  with  his 
pohtical  friends,  never  mentioned  his  sacrifices  nor  his  services, 
expressed  no  resentment  at  neglect,  and  was  therefore  pushed 
into  such  situations  as  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  feeble  and  delicate  in  a 
crowd. 

A  high  merit  in  Sir  James  Mackintosh  was  his  real  and  unaf- 
fected philanthropy.  He  did  not  make  the  improvement  of  the 
great  mass  of  mankind  an  engine  of  popularity,  and  a  stepping- 
stone  to  power,  but  he  had  a  genuine  love  of  human  happiness. 
Whatever  might  assuage  the  angry  passions,  and  arrange  the  con- 
flicting interests  of  nations ;  whatever  could  promote  peace,  in- 
crease knowledge,  extend  commerce,  diminish  crime,  and  en- 
courage industry ;  whatever  could  exalt  human  character,  and 
could  enlarge  human  understanding ;  struck  at  once  at  the  heart 
of  your  father,  and  roused  all  his  faculties.  I  have  seen  him  in 
a  moment  when  this  spirit  came  upon  him — like  a  great  ship  of 

17 


386  HOSPITALITY. 

war — cut  his  cable,  and  spread  liis  enormous  canvass  and  launch 
into  a  wide  sea  of  reasoning  eloquence. 

But  though  easily  warmed  by  great  schemes  of  benevolence  and 
human  improvement,  his  manner  was  cold  to  individuals*  There 
was  an  apparent  want  of  heartiness  and  cordiality.  It  seemed  as 
if  he  had  more  affection  for  the  species  than  for  the  ingredients  of 
which  it  was  composed.  He  was  in  reality  very  hospitable,  and 
so  fond  of  company,  that  he  was  hardly  happy  out  of  it ;  but  he 
did  not  receive  his  friends  with  that  honest  joy  which  warms  more 
than  dmner  or  wine.* 

This  is  the  good  and  evil  of  your  father  which  comes  upper- 
most. If  he  had  been  arrogant  and  grasping;  if  he  had  been 
faithless  and  false ;  if  he  had  always  been  eager  to  strangle  infant 
genius  in  its  cradle ;  always  ready  to  betray  and  to  blacken  those 
with  whom  he  sat  at  meat ;  he  would  have  passed  many  men, 
who,  in  the  coui'se  of  his  long  life,  have  passed  him ;  but,  without 
selling  his  soul  for  pottage,  if  he  only  had  had  a  little  more  pru- 
dence for  the  promotion  of  his  interests,  and  more  of  angry 
passions  for  the  punishment  of  those  detractors  who  envied  his 
fame  and  presumed  upon  his  sweetness ;  if  he  had  been  more 
aware  of  his  powers,  and  of  that  space  which  nature  intended  him 
to  occupy :  he  would  have  acted  a  great  part  in  life,  and  remained 
a  character  in  history.  As  it  is,  he  has  left,  in  many  of  the  best 
men  in  England,  and  of  the  continent,  the  deepest  admiration  of 
his  talents,  his  wisdom,  his  knowledge,  and  his  benevolence. 

I  remain,  my  dear  sir,  very  truly  yours, 

Sydney  Smith. 

*  In  reference  to  this  passage  a  Quarterly  reviewer  remarked :  "  Mr. 
Sydney  Smith  is  remarkable  for  the  quality  he  describes  as  wanting  in 
Mackintosh ;  and  to  have  passed  a  day  at  Combe  Florey,  the  paragon  of 
parsonages,  is  an  epoch  in  the  life  of  any  man."     (Quar.  Rev.,  Feb.,  1836.) 


FRANCIS   HORNER.  387 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  FRANCIS  HORNER. 


LETTER  FROM  SYDNEY  SMITH  TO  LEONARD  HORNER. 

My  dear  Sir  :  You  desire  me  to  commit  to  paper  my  recol- 
lections of  your  brother,  Francis  Horner.  I  think  that  the  many 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  his  death,  have  not  at  all  impaired 
my  memory  of  his  virtues,  at  the  same  time  that  they  have  afibrded 
me  more  ample  means  of  comparing  him  with  other  important  hu- 
man beings  with  Avhom  I  have  become  acquainted  since  that 
period. 

I  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  Francis  Horner  at  Edinburgh, 
where  he  was  among  the  most  conspicuous  young  men  in  that  en- 
ergetic and  infragrant  city.  My  desire  to  know  him  proceeded 
first  of  all  from  being  cautioned  against  him  by  some  excellent  and 
feeble  people  to  whom  I  had  brought  letters  of  introduction,  and 
who  represented  him  to  me  as  a  person  of  violent  political  opinions. 
I  interpreted  this  to  mean  a  person  who  thought  for  himself — 
who  had  firmness  enough  to  take  his  own  line  in  life,  and  who 
loved  truth  better  than  he  loved  Dundas,  at  that  time  the  tyrant 
of  Scotland.  I  found  my  interpretation  to  be  just,  and  from  thence 
till  the  period  of  his  death,  we  lived  in  constant  society,  and  fi'iend- 
sliip  with  each  other. 

There  was  something  very  remarkable  in  his  countenance  — the 
commandments  were  written  on  his  face,  and  I  have  often  told  him 
there  Avas  not  a  crime  he  might  not  commit  with  impunity,  as  no 
judge  or  jury  who  saw  him,  would  give  the  smallest  degree  of 
credit  to  any  evidence  against  him :  there  was  in  his  look  a  calm 
settled  love  of  all  that  was  honourable  and  "ood — an  air  of  wis- 


S83  PERSONAL   TRAITS. 

dora  and  of  sweetness ;  you  saw  at  once  that  he  was  a  great  man, 
whom  nature  had  intended  for  a  leader  of  human  beings ;  you 
ranged  yourself  willingly  under  his  banners,  and  cheerfully  submit- 
ted to  his  sway. 

lie  had  an  intense  love  of  knowledge ;  he  wasted  very  little  of  the 
portion  of  life  conceded  to  him,  and  was  always  improving  himself, 
not  in  the  most  foolish  of  all  schemes  of  education,  in  making  long 
and  short  verses  and  scanning  Greek  choruses,  but  in  the  mascu- 
line pursuits  of  the  philosophy  of  legislation,  of  political  economy, 
of  the  constitutional  history  of  the  country,  and  of  the  history  and 
changes  of  Ancient  and  Modern  Europe.  He  had  read  so  much, 
and  so  well,  that  he  was  a  contemporary  of  all  men,  and  a  citizen 
of  aU  states. 

I  never  saw  any  person  who  took  such  a  lively  interest  in  the 
daily  happiness  of  his  friends.  If  you  were  unwell,  if  there  was 
a  sick  child  in  the  nursery,  if  any  death  happened  in  your  family, 
he  never  forgot  you  for  an  instant !  You  always  found  there  was 
a  man  with  a  good  heart  who  was  never  far  from  you. 

He  loved  truth  so  much,  that  he  never  could  bear  any  jesting 
upon  important  subjects.  I  remember  one  evening  the  late  Lord 
Dudley  and  myself  pretended  to  justify  the  conduct  of  the  govern- 
ment in  stealing  the  Danish  fleet;  we  carried  on  the  argument 
with  some  wickedness  against  our  graver  friend;  he  could  not 
stand  it,  but  bolted  indignantly  out  of  the  room  ;  we  flung  up  the 
sash,  and,  with  loud  peals  of  laughter,  professed  ourselves  decided 
Scandinavians  ;  we  offered  him  not  only  the  ships,  but  all  the  shot, 
powder,  cordage,  and  even  the  biscuit,  if  he  would  come  back :  but 
nothing  could  turn  him  ;  he  went  home  ;  and  it  took  us  a  fortnight 
of  serious  behaviour  before  we  were  forgiven. 

Francis  Horner  Avas  a  very  modest  person,  which  men  of  great 
understanding  seldom  are.  It  was  liis  habit  to  confirm  his  opin- 
ion by  the  opinions  of  others ;  and  often  to  form  them  from  the 
same  source.* 

*  Writing  to  Jeffrey,  in  1805,  Smith  says:  "Homer  is  a  very  happy 
man ;  his  worth  and  talents  are  acknowledged  by  the  world  at  a  more  early 
period  than  those  of  any  independent  and  upright  man  I  ever  remember.  Ho 
verifies  an  observation  I  have  often  made,  that  the  world  do  not  dislike  origi- 
nality,  liberality,  and  independence,  so  much  as  the  insulting  arrogance  with 
which  they  are  almost  always  accompanied.  Now,  Horner  plea.'^es  the  best 
Judges,  an<l  does  not  otTend  the  worst.'' 


1 


SIMPLICITY   OF   CHARACTER.  8 SO 

His  success  in  the  House  of  Commons  was  decide;]  and  imme- 
diate, and  went  on  increasing  to  tlie  last  day  of  his  life.  Though 
put  into  Parliament  by  some  of  the  great  borough  lords,  every  one 
saw  that  he  represented  his  own  real  opinions :  without  hereditary 
wealth,  and  known  as  a  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  his  inde- 
pendence was  never  questioned :  his  integrity,  sincerity,  and  mod- 
eration, were  acknowledged  by  all  sides,  and  respected  even  by 
those  impudent  assassins  who  live  only  to  discourage  honesty  and 
traduce  virtue.  The  House  of  Commons  as  a  near  relative  of 
mine  once  observed,*  has  more  good  taste  than  any  man  in  it. 
Homer,  from  his  manners,  his  ability,  and  his  integrity,  became  a 
general  fxvourite  with  the  House ;  they  suspended  for  him  their 
habitual  dislike  of  lawyers,  of  political  adventurers,  and  of  young 
men  of  conseederable  taalents  from  the  North. 

Your  brother  was  wholly  without  pretensions  or  affectation.  I 
have  lived  a  long  time  in  Scotland,  and  have  seen  very  few  af- 
fected Scotchmen ;  of  those  few  he  certainly  was  not  one.  In  the 
ordinary  course  of  life,  he  never  bestowed  a  thought  upon  the  effect 
he  was  producing ;  he  trusted  to  his  own  good  nature,  and  good 
intentions,  and  left  the  rest  to  chance. 

Having  known  him  well  before  he  had  acquired  a  great  London 
reputation,  I  never  observed  that  his  fame  produced  the  slightest 
alteration  in  his  deportment ;  he  was  as  affable  to  me,  and  to  all 
his  old  friends,  as  when  we  were  debating  metaphysics  in  a  garret 
in  Edinburgh.  I  don't  think  it  was  in  the  power  of  ermine  or 
mace,  or  seals,  or  lawn,  or  lace,  or  of  any  of  those  emblems  and  or- 
naments with  which  power  loves  to  decorate  itself,  to  have  destroyed 
the  simplicity  of  his  charactez-.  I  believe  it  would  have  defied  all 
the  corrupting  appellations  of  human  vanity  :  Severe,  Honourable, 
Right  Honourable,  Sacred,  Reverend,  Right  Reverend,  Lord  High, 
Earl,  Marquis,  Lord  JMayor,  Your  Grace,  Your  Honour,  and 
every  other  vocable  which  folly  has  invented,  and  idolatry  cherished, 
would  all  have  been  lavished  on  him  in  vain. 

The  character  of  his  understanding  was  the  exercise  of  vigorous 
reasoning,  in  pursuit  of  important  and  difficult  truth.  He  had  no 
wit ;  nor  did  he  condescend  to  that  inferior  variety  of  this  electric 
talent  which  prevails  occasionally  in  the  North,  and  which,  under 
the  name  of  Wut,  is  so  infinitely  distressing  to  persons  of  good 
*  His  brother  Robert  Smith. 


390  VIETUES. 

taste.     He  had  no  very  ardent  and  political  imagination,  but  he 
liad  that  innate  force,  which, 

"  Quemvis  perferre  laborem 


Suasit,  ct  indiixit  noctes  vigilare  serenas 
Quoerentem  dictis  qiiibus,  et  quo  carmine  demum, 
Clara  sua;  jiossit  prtepandere  lumina  menti."* 

Your  late  excellent  father,  though  a  very  well-informed  person, 
Avas  not  what  would  be  called  a  literary  man,  and  you  will  readily 
concede  to  me  that  none  of  his  family  would  pretend  to  rival  yoiir 
brother  in  point  of  talents.  I  never  saw  more  constant  and  high- 
principled  attention  to  parents  than  in  his  instance ;  more  habitual 
and  respectful  deference  to  their  opinions  and  wishes.  I  never 
saw  brothers  and  sisters,  over  whom  he  might  have  assumed  a 
family  sovereignty,  treated  with  more  cheerful  and  endearing 
equality.  I  mention  these  things,  because  men  who  do  good 
things  are  so  much  more  valuable  than  those  who  say  Avise  ones ; 
because  the  order  of  human  excellence  is  so  often  inverted,  and 
great  talents  considered  as  an  excuse  for  the  absence  of  obscure 
virtues. 

Francis  Horner  was  always  very  guarded  in  his  political  opin- 
ions ;  guarded,  I  mean,  against  the  excesses  into  which  so  many 
young  men  of  talents  were  betrayed  by  their  admiration  of  the 
French  revolution.  He  was  an  English  Whig,  and  no  more  than  an 
English  Whig.  He  mourned  sincerely  over  the  crimes  and  madness 
of  France,  and  never,  for  a  single  moment,  surrendered  his  under- 
standing to  the  novelty  and  nonsense  which  infested  the  world  at 
that  strange  era  of  human  affairs. 

I  remember  the  death  of  many  eminent  Englishmen,  but  I  can 
safely  say,  I  never  remember  an  impression  so  general  as  that  ex- 

*  Part  of  the  address  of  Lucretius  to  Memmius  in  the  opening  of  his  great 
philosophical  poem  De  Rerum  Natura,  where  the  author  is  warmed  by  friend 
ship  to  overcome  the  difficulties  of  presenting  Greek  themes  in  Latin  meas- 
ures ;  in  Creech's  loose  version  : — 

"  Yet  for  respect  of  you  with  great  delight 
I  meet  these  dangers,  and  I  wake  all  night, 
Labouring  fit  numbers  and  fit  words  to  find, 
To  make  things  plain  and  to  instruct  your  mind, 
And  teach  her  to  direct  her  curious  eye 
Into  coy  nature's  greatest  privacy." 
Smith  has  adapted  the  passage  by  some  slight  changes. 


OBITUARY.  391 

cited  by  the  cleatli  of  Francis  Ilorner.*  The  public  looked  upon 
him  as  a  powerful  and  safe  man,  who  was  labouring,  not  for  him- 
self or  his  party,  but  for  them.  They  were  convinced  of  his  talents-, 
they  confided  in  his  moderation,  and  they  were  sure  of  his  motives ; 
he  had  improved  so  quickly  and  so  much,  that  his  early  death  was 
looked  upon  as  the  destruction  of  a  great  statesman,  who  had  done 
but  a  small  part  of  the  good  which  might  be  expected  from  him, 
who  would  infallibly  have  risen  to  the  highest  offices,  and  as  infal- 
libly have  filled  them  to  the  public  good.  Then,  as  he  had  never 
lost  a  friend,  and  made  so  few  enemies,  there  was  no  friction,  no 
drawback  ;  public  feeling  had  its  free  course  ;  the  image  of  a  good 
and  great  man  was  broadly  before  the  world,  unsullied  by  any 
breath  of  hatred ;  there  was  nothing  but  pure  sorrow !  Youth 
destroyed  before  its  time,  great  talents  and  wisdom  hurried  to  the 
grave,  a  kind  and  good  man,  who  might  have  lived  for  the  glory 
of  England,  torn  from  us  in  the  flower  of  his  life  !  —  but  all  this  is 
gone  and  past,  and,  as  Galileo  said  of  his  lost  sight,  "  It  has  pleased 
God  it  should  be  so,  and  it  must  please  me  also." 

Ever  truly,  yours,  Sydney  Smith. 

Combe  Floret,  26th  August,  1842. 

*  Horner  died  at  Pisa,  in  February,  1817,  in  the  thirty-ninth  year  of  his 
age.  He  was  horn  in  Edinburgh,  in  1778,  and  was  the  playmate,  in  child- 
hood, of  Henry  Brougham.  Educated  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  he 
pursued  his  studies  in  England  ;  wrote  for  the  first  number  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  pi-actised  law  in  Scotland,  and  was  called  to  the  English  bar  in  1807. 
He  was  best  known  by  his  career  in  the  House  of  Commons,  from  180G  to 
his  death.  He  was  at  home  on  the  currency,  the  corn  laws,  and  other  labo- 
rious questions  of  government  and  trade.  His  Memoir  and  Correspondence, 
edited  by  his  brother,  Leonard  Horner,  to  which  Sydney  Smith's  letter  was 
a  contribution,  are  a  noble  monument  to  his  memory.  Lady  Holland  (Me- 
moir, p.  154)  supplies  these  additional  memoranda  of  Sydney  Smith's  affec- 
tion and  respect  for  his  friend:  "My  father  speaks  of  his  feelings  on  this 
loss,  in  the  following  letter  to  Mr.  Horner's  younger  brother:  'Foston, 
March,  23,  1817.  I  remember  no  misfortune  of  my  life  which  I  have  felt  so 
deeply  as  the  loss  of  your  brother.  I  never  saw  any  man  who  combined 
together  so  much  talent,  worth,  and  warmth  of  heart;  and  we  lived  together 
in  habits  of  great  friendship  and  affection  for  many  years.  I  shall  always  re- 
tain a  most  lively  and  affectionate  remembrance  of  him  to  the  day  of  my 
death.'  Again,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  John  Whishaw  (March  26,  1817),  he 
Bays:  '  I  have  received  a  melancholy  fragment  from  poor  Horner  —  a  letter 
half-finished  at  his  death.  I  cannot  say  how  much  I  was  affected  by  it ;  in- 
deed, on  looking  back  on  my  own  mind,  I  never  remember  to  have  felt  an 
event  more  deeply  than  his  death  ' " 


392  LETTEES. 


PASSAGES  FROM  LETTERS. 


VISITS    OXFORD CLIQUEISM. 

{To  Jeffrey,  1803.)  I  have  been  spending  three  or  four  days 
in  Oxford,  in  a  contested  election ;  Horner  went  down  with  me, 
and  was  much  entertained.  I  was  so  delighted  with  Oxford,  after 
my  long  absence,  that  I  almost  resolved  to  pass  the  long  vacation 
there,  with  my  family,  amidst  the  shades  of  the  trees  and  the 
silence  of  the  monasteries.  Horner  is  to  come  down  too  ;  Avill  you 
join  us  ?  We  would  settle  the  fate  of  nations,  and  believe  our- 
selves (as  all  three  or  four  men  who  live  together  do)  the  sole 
repositories  of  knowledge,  liberality,  and  acuteness. 


LIFE    OF    A    PARENT. 

{To  Jeffrey,  London,  1803  or  1804.)  Mrs.  Sydney  is  pretty 
well,  and  slowly  recovering  from  her  shock,*  of  which  your  kind- 
ness and  your  experience  enabled  you  to  ascertain  the  violence. 
Children  are  horribly  insecure :  the  life  of  a  parent  is  the  life  of 
a  gambler. 


WELL-INFORMED    WOMEN. 

{To  Jeffrey,  London,  1804.) is  here,  and  will  cer- 
tainly settle  in  Scotland  next  winter.  She  is,  for  a  woman,  well- 
mformed  and  very  liberal :  neither  is  she  at  all  disagreeable ;  but 
the  information  of  a  very  plain  woman  is  so  inconsiderable,  that  I 
agree  with  you  in  setting  no  very  great  store  by  it.    I  am  no  great 

*  The  loss  of  her  infant  son. 


JEFFREY.  393 

physio2rnomist,  nor  have  1  much  confidence  in  a  science  which  pre- 
tends to  discover  tlie  inside  from  the  out ;  but  where  I  have  seen 
fine  eyes,  a  beautiful  complexion,  grace  and  symmetry  in  women, 
I  have  generally  thought  them  amazingly  well-infonned  and  ex- 
tremely philosophicaL     In  contrary  instances,  seldom  or  never. 


JEFFREY  S    ANALYSIS. 

(7b  Jeffrey,  London,  1804.)  I  certainly,  my  dear  Jeffrey,  in 
conjunction  with  the  Knight  of  the  Shaggy  Eyebrows,*  do  protest 
against  your  increasing  and  unprofitable  skepticism.  I  exhort 
you  to  restrain  the  violent  tendency  of  your  nature  for  analj'^sis, 
and  to  cultivate  synthetical  propensities.  What  is  virtue  ?  "What's 
the  use  of  truth  ?  "What's  the  use  of  honour  ?  "What's  a  guinea, 
but  a  d — d  yellow  circle?  The  whole  effort  of  your  mind  is  to 
destroy.  Because  others  build  slightly  and  eagerly,  you  employ 
yourself  in  kicking  down  their  houses,  and  contract  a  sort  of 
aversion  for  the  more  honourable,  useful,  and  difficult  task  of  build- 
ing well  yourself. 


TRIUMPH    OF    CIVILIZED    LIFE. 

(Jb  Jeffrey,  London,  1806.)  Tell  Murray  that  I  was  much 
struck  with  the  politeness  of  Miss  Markham  the  day  after  he  went. 
In  carving  a  partridge,  I  splashed  her  with  gravy  from  head  to 
foot ;  and  though  I  saw  three  distinct  brown  rills  of  animal  juice 
trickling  down  her  cheek,  she  had  the  complaisance  to  swear  that 
not  a  drop  had  reached  her.  Such  circumstances  are  the  triumphs 
of  civilized  life. 


HINTS    TO    JEFFREY. 

{To  Jeffrey,  London,  1806.)  I  must  be  candid  with  you,  my 
dear  Jeffrey,  and  tell  you  that  I  do  not  like  your  article  on  tlie 
Scotch  Courts ;  and  with  me  think  many  persons  whose  opinions 
I  am  sure  you  would  respect.  I  subscribe  to  none  of  your  reason- 
ings, hardly,  about  juries ;  and  the  manner  in  w^hich  you  have 
done  it  is  far  from  happy.     You  have  made,  too,  some  egregious 

*  Francis  Homer. 
17* 


394  MAXIMS. 

mistakes  about  English  law,  pointed  out  to  me  by  one  of  the  first 
lawyers  of  the  King's  Bench.  I  like  to  tell  you  these  things, 
because  you  never  do  so  well  as  when  you  are  humbled  and  fright- 
ened, and  if  you  could  be  alarmed  into  the  semblance  of  modesty, 
you  would  charm  everybody ;  but  remember  my  joke  against  you 
about  the  moon:  "D — n  the  solar  system!  bad  light — planets 
too  distant — pestered  with  comets  —  feeble  contrivance;  could 
make  a  better  with  great  ease." 


PAYING    IN    TURBOT. 

{To  Jeffrey,  London,  1808.)  I  regret  sincerely  that  so  many 
years  have  elapsed  since  we  met.  I  hope,  if  you  possibly  can,  you 
will  contrive  to  come  to  town  this  spring :  we  will  keep  open  house 
for  you ;  you  shall  not  be  molested  with  large  parties.  You  have 
earned  a  very  high  reputation  here,  and  you  may  eat  it  out  in 
turbot,  at  great  people's  houses,  if  you  please  ;  though  I  well  know 
you  would  prefer  the  quiet  society  of  your  old  friends. 


MAXIMS. 


{To  Lady  Holland,  about  1809.)  I  mean  to  make  some  max- 
ims, like  Rochefoucauld,  and  to  preserve  them.  My  first  is  this : 
After  having  lived  half  their  lives  respectably,  many  men  get  tired 
of  honesty,  and  many  women  of  propriety. 


A    SIGN    OF    THE    STATE    IN    DIFFICULTY. 

{To  Earl  Grey,  1809.)  There  is  no  man  who  thinks  better 
of  what  you  and  your  coadjutors  can  and  will  do ;  but  I  can  not 
help  looking  upon  it  as  a  most  melancholy  proof  of  the  miser- 
able state  of  this  country,  when  men  of  integrity  and  ability  are 
employed.  If  it  were  possible  to  have  gone  on  without  them,  I 
am  sure  they  would  never  have  been  thought  of. 


ROGERS. 


{To  Lady  Holland,  1815.)      Many  thanks  for  your  letter.     I 
think  you  very  fortunate  iu  having  Rogei's  at  Rome.     Show  me  a 


FORMING   AN   OPINION.  395 

more  kind  and  friendly  man ;  secondly,  one,  from  good  manners, 
knowledge,  fun,  taste,  and  observation,  irore  agreeable ;  thii'dly,  a 
man  of  more  strict  political  integrity,  and  of  better  character  in 
private  life.  If  I  were  to  choose  any  Englishman  in  foreign  parts 
whom  I  should  wish  to  blunder  upon,  it  should  be  Rogers. 


SIR    WALTER    SCOTT. 

(^To  Lady  Holland,  Foston,  1818.)  I  am  sorry  we  cannot 
agree  about  Walter  Scott.  My  test  of  a  book  written  to  amuse,  is 
amusement ;  but  I  am  rather  rash,  and  ought  not  to  say  /  am 
amused,  before  I  have  inquired  whether  Sharp  or  Mackintosh  is 
so.  Whishaw's*  plan  is  the  best :  he  gives  no  opinion  for  the  first 
week,  but  confines  himself  to  chuckling  and  elevating  his  chin ;  in 
the  meantime,  he  drives  diligently  about  the  first  critical  stations, 
breakfasts  in  Mark  Lane,  hears  from  Hertford  College,  and  by 
Saturday  night  is  as  bold  as  a  lion,  and  as  decisive  as  a  court  of 
justice. 


A    DINNER-PARTY    AT    HOLLAND    HOUSE. 

( To  the  Countess  Grey.)  We  had  a  large  party  at  dinner  here 
yesterday :  Dr.  WoUaston,  the  great  philosopher,  who  did  not  say 
one  word;  William  Lamb;  Sir  Henry  Bunbury;  Palmella,  the 
Portuguese  ambassador ;  Lord  Aberdeen,  the  Exquisite ;  Sir 
William  Grant,  a  rake  and  disorderly  man  of  the  town,  recently 
Master  of  the  Rolls  ;  Whishaw,  a  man  of  fashion  ;  Frere  ;  Hallam, 
of  the  "  Middle  Ages ;"  and  myself.  In  spite  of  such  heterogeneous 
materials,  we  had  a  pleasant  party.f 

*  John  Whishaw,  the  political  andsocialfriendof  Mackintosh,  and  the  Ro- 
millys.  Writing  to  Earl  Grey,  at  the  period  of  the  Reform  Bill,  Smith  says, 
"  Cultivate  Whishaw  ;  he  is  one  of  the  most  sensible  men  in  England."  And 
previously,  to  John  Allen,  in  1826:  "We  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  old 
Whishaw  this  summer ;  he  is  as  pleasant  as  he  is  wise  and  honest.  He  has 
character  enough  to  make  him  well  received  if  he  were  dull,  and  wit  enough 
to  make  him  popular  if  he  were  a  rogue." 

t  This  ironical  passage  has  given  rise  to  a  curious  correspondence  between 
the  representatives  of  the  family  of  one  of  the  ])ersons  mentioned  and  Mrs. 
Austin,  the  editor  of  the  Letters.  A  nephew  of  Sir  William  Grant,  William 
Charles  Grant  complains  to  the  lady  of  the  slander  to  the  memory  of  his  reJ- 


896  AMERICA. 


TRAVELLERS    IN    AMERICA. 


{To  the  Earl  Grey,  Foston,  Nov.  30,  1818.)  Dear  Lord 
Grey :  I  will  send  Ladj  Grey  the  news  from  London  when  I  get 
there.  I  am  sure  she  is  too  wise  a  woman  not  to  be  fond  of  gos- 
siping ;  I  am  fond  of  it,  and  have  some  talents  for  it. 

I  recommend  you  to  read  Hall,  Palmer,  Feai^on,  and  Bradbury's 
Travels  in  America,  particularly  Fearon.  Those  four  books  may, 
with  ease,  be  read  through  between  breakfast  and  dinner.  There 
is  nothing  so  curious  and  interesting  as  the  rapidity  with  which 
the  Americans  are  spreading  themselves  over  that  immense  con- 
tinent. 

It  is  quite  contrary  to  all  probability  that  America  should  re- 
main in  an  integral  state.  They  aim  at  extending  from  sea  to  sea, 
and  have  already  made  settlements  on  the  Pacific.  There  can  be 
no  community  of  interest  between  people  placed  under  such  very 
different  circumstances :  the  mai'itime  Americans,  and  those  who 
communicate  with  Europe  by  the  Mississippi  are  at  this  moment, 
as  far  as  interest  can  divide  men,  two  separate  people.  There 
does  not  appear  to  be  in  America  at  this  moment  one  man  of  any 
considerable  talents.  They  are  a  very  sensible  people ;  and  seem 
to  have  conducted  their  affairs,  upon  the  whole,  very  well.  Birk- 
beck's  second  book  is  not  so  good  as  his  first.  He  deceives  him- 
self—  says  he  wishes  to  deceive  himself — and  is  not  candid.  If  a 
man  chooses  to  say,  "  I  will  live  up  to  my  neck  in  mud,  fight 
bears,  swim  rivers,  and  combat  backwoodsmen,  that  I  may  ulti- 

ative  (one  of  the  most  unexceptionable  men  in  England  in  ]n-ivate  and  public 
life),  asks  for  its  suppression,  and  a  public  denial  commensurate  with  the  in- 
jury, adding  that  he  supposes  Sydney  Smith  "  to  have  been  imposed  upon  by- 
some  malicious  person."  Mrs.  Austin  gravely  promises  to  omit  the  oiTcnding 
words  from  any  future  edition.  The  London  Athenteum  (April  26,  1856), 
which  publishes  the  correspondence,  as  "  The  Sequel  to  a  Jest,"  compares 
the  original  passage  with  Pope's  ironical  sketch  (Epilogue  to  the  Satires), 
when  he  has  invoked  the  spirit  of  the  detractor  Arnall  to  "  aid  me  while  I 
Ue"  :— 

"  Cobham's  a  coward,  Polwarth  is  a  slave. 

And  Lyttleton  a  dark  designing  knave, 

St.  John  has  ever  been  a  wealthy  fool  — 

But  let  me  add,  Sir  Robert's  mighty  dull, 

Has  never  made  a  friend  in  private  life. 

And  was,  besides,  a  tyrant  to  his  wife." 


TO   HIS   SON   AT   SCHOOL.  397 

mately  gain  an  independence  for  myself  and  cliildren,"  tliis  is 
plain  and  intelligible ;  but,  by  Birkbeck's  account,  it  is  much  like 
settling  at  Putney  or  Kew ;  only  the  people  are  more  liberal  and 
enlightened.  Their  economy  and  their  cheap  government  will  do 
some  good  in  this  country  by  way  of  example.  Their  allowance 
to  Monroe  is  £5,000  per  annum ;  and  he  finds  his  own  victualv 
fire,  and  candles ! 

Ever  yours,  dear  Lord  Grey,  most  sincerely, 

Sydney  Smith. 


TO    HIS     SON    DOUGLAS. 

(^To  Douglas  Smith,  Esq.,  King's  Scholar  at  Westminster  College, 
Foston  Rectory,  1819.)     My  dear  Douglas:  Concerning  this  Mr. 

,  I  would  not  have  you  put  any  trust  in  him,  for  he  is  not 

trustworthy ;  but  so  live  with  him  as  if  one  day  or  other  he  were 
to  be  your  enemy.  With  such  a  character  as  his,  this  is  a  neces- 
sary precaution. 

In  the  time  you  can  give  to  English  reading  you  should  con- 
sider what  it  is  most  needful  to  have,  what  it  is  most  shameful  to 
want — shirts  and  stockings,  before  frills  and  collars.  Such  is  the 
historj'-  of  your  own  country,  to  be  studied  in  Hume,  then  in  Ra- 
pin's  History  of  England,  with  Tindal's  Continuation.  Hume 
takes  you  to  the  end  of  James  the  Second,  Eapin  and  Tindal  will 
carry  you  to  the  end  of  Anne.  Then,  Coxe's  "  Life  of  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,"  and  the  "  Duke  of  Marlborough  ;"  and  these  read  with 
attention  to  dates  and  geography.  Then,  the  history  of  the  other 
three  or  four  enlightened  nations  in  Europe.  For  the  English 
poets,  I  will  let  you  off  at  present  with  Milton,  Dryden,  Pope,  and 
Shakespeare ;  and  remember,  always,  in  books,  keep  the  best 
company.  Don't  read  a  line  of  Ovid  till  you  have  mastered 
Virgil ;  nor  a  line  of  Thomson  till  you  have  exhausted  Pope ;  nor 
of  Massinger,  till  you  are  familiar  with  Shakespeare. 

I  am  glad  you  liked  your  box  and  its  contents.  Think  of  us  as 
we  think  of  you ;  and  send  us  the  most  acceptable  of  all  presents 
— the  information  that  you  are  improving  in  all  particulars. 

The  greatest  of  all  human  mysteries  are  the  "Westminster  holi- 
days. If  you  can  get  a  peep  behind  the  curtain,  pray  let  us  kuo\Y 
immediately  the  day  of  your  coming  home. 


398  OLD   FRIENDS. 

"We  havo  had  about  three  or  four  ounces  of  raui  here,  that  is 
all.  I  heard  of  your  being  wet  through  in  London,  and  envied 
you  very  much.  The  whole  of  this  parish  is  pulverized  from 
long  and  excessive  drought.  Our  whole  property  depends  upon 
the  tranquillity  of  the  winds :  if  it  blow  before  it  rains,  we  shall 
all  be  up  in  the  air  in  the  shape  of  dust,  and  shall  be  transparished 
we  know  not  where. 

God  bless  you,  my  dear  boy !  I  hojDe  we  shall  soon  meet  at 
Lydiard.     Your  affectionate  father, 

Sydney  Smith. 


REVISITS    EDINBURGH. 

{To  Lady  Mary  Bennett,  Dec.  1821.)  In  the  first  place  I 
went  to  Lord  Grey's,  and  stayed  with  them  three  or  four  days ; 
fi'om  thence  I  went  to  Edinburgh,  where  I  had  not  been  for  ten 
years.  I  found  a  noble  passage  into  the  town,  and  new  since  my 
time ;  two  beautiful  English  chapels,  two  of  the  handsomest 
library-rooms  in  Great  Britain,  and  a  wonderful  increase  of  shoes 
and  stockings,  streets  and  houses.  When  I  lived  thei'e,  very  few 
maids  had  shoes  and  stockings,  but  plodded  about  the  house  with 
feet  as  big  as  a  family  Bible,  and  legs  as  large  as  portmanteaus. 
J  stayed  with  Jeffrey.  My  time  was  spent  with  the  Whig  leaders 
of  the  Scotch  bar,  a  set  of  very  honest,  clever  men,  each  posses- 
sing tliirty-two  different  sorts  of  wine.  My  old  friends  were  glad 
to  see  me;  some  had  turned  Methodists  —  some  had  lost  tlieir 
teeth  —  some  had  grown  very  rich — some  very  fat — some  were 
dying — and,  alas!  alas!  many  were  dead;  but  the  Avorld  is  a 
coarse  enough  place,  so  I  talked  away,  coirX-rtsd  some,  praised 
others,  kissed  some  old  ladies,  and  passed  a  very  riotous  week. 


AN    ARGILLACEOUS    IMMORTALITY. 

{To  John  Murray,  Foston,  1821.)  How  little  you  understand 
young  Wedgewood !  If  he  appears  to  love  waltzing,  it  is  only  to 
catch  fresh  figures  for  cream-jugs.  Depend  upon  it,  he  will  have 
Jeffrey  and  you  upon  some  of  his  vessels,  and  you  will  enjoy  sax 
argillaceous  immortality 


WAR.  399 

ANTI-WAR. 

{To  the  Countess  Grey,  Foston,  Tori;  Feb.  19,  1823.)  For 
God's  sake,  do  not  drag  me  into  another  war !  I  am  worn  down, 
and  worn  out,  with  crusading  and  defending  Europe,  and  protect- 
ing mankind ;  I  must  tliink  a  Httle  of  myself.  I  am  sorry  for  the 
Spaniards  —  I  am  sorry  for  the  Greeks  —  I  deplore  tlie  fate  of  the 
Jews  ;  the  people  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  are  groaning  under  the 
most  detestable  tyranny ;  Bagdad  is  oppressed  —  I  do  not  like  the 
present  state  of  the  Delta — Thibet  is  not  comfortable.  Am  I  to 
fight  for  all  these  people  ?  The  world  is  bursting  Avith  sin  and 
sorrow.  Am  I  to  be  champion  of  the  Decalogue,  and  to  be 
eternally  raising  fleets  and  armies  to  make  all  men  good  and 
happy?  We  have  just  done  saving  Europe,  and  I  am  afraid  the 
consequence  will  be,  that  we  shall  cut  each  other's  thi'oats.  No 
war,  dear  Lady  Grey ! — no  eloquence ;  but  apathy,  selfishness, 
common  sense,  arithmetic !  I  beseech  you,  secure  Lord  Grey's 
Eword  and  pistols,  as  the  housekeeper  did  Don  Quixote's  armour. 
If  t^iere  is  another  war,  life  will  not  be  worth  having.  I  will  go 
to  war  with  the  King  of  Denmark  if  he  is  impertinent  to  you,  or 
does  any  injury  to  Howick ;  but  for  no  other  cause. 

"  May  the  vengeance  of  Heaven"  overtake  all  the  Legitimates 
of  Verona !  but,  in  the  present  state  of  rent  and  taxes,  they  must 
be  left  to  the  vengeance  of  Heaven !  I  allow  fighting  in  such  a 
cause  to  be  a  luxury ;  but  the  business  of  a  prudent,  sensible  man, 
is  to  guard  against  luxury. 


AN    ORATORIO. 

(To  Lady  Holland,  1823.)  Nothing  can  be  more  disgusting 
than  an  Oratorio.  How  absurd,  to  see  five  hundred  people  fiddling 
like  madmen  about  the  Israelites  in  the  Red  Sea !  Loi'd  Morpeth 
pretends  to  say  he  was  pleased,  but  I  see  a  great  change  in  him 
since  the  music-meeting.  Pray  tell  Luttrell  he  did  wrong  not  to 
come  to  the  music.  It  tired  me  to  death  ;  it  would  have  pleased 
him.     He  is  a  melodious  person,  and  much  given  to  sacred  music. 

In  hrs  fits  of  absence  I  have  heard  him  hum  the  Hundredth 
PsakQ !  (Old  Version.) 


400  TEMPERANCE. 


{To  Lady  Holland,  1827.)  Jeffrey  has  been  here  with  his 
adjectives,  who  always  travel  with  him.  His  throat  is  giving  way ; 
so  much  wine  goes  down  it,  so  many  miHion  words  leap  over  it, 
how  can  it  rest  ?  Pray  make  him  a  judge ;  he  is  a  truly  great 
man,  and  is  very  heedless  of  his  own  interests.  I  lectured  him 
on  his  romantic  folly  of  wishing  his  friends  to  be  preferred  before 
himself,  and  succeeded,  I  think,  in  making  him  a  little  more  selfish. 


IRRELIGION    AXD    IMPIETY. 

{To  Messrs ,  Booksellers, Foston,  1827.)     I  hate 

the  insolence,  jiersecution,  and  intolerance,  which  so  often  pass  un- 
der the  name  of  religion,  and  (as  you  know)  I  have  fought  against 
them ;  but  I  have  an  unaffected  horror  of  irrehgion  and  impiety ; 
and  every  principle  of  suspicion  and  fear  would  be  excited  in  me 
by  a  man  who  professed  himself  an  infidel. 


TEMPERANCE. 

{To  Lady  Holland,  1828.)  Many  thanks  for  your  kind  anxiety 
respecting  my  health.  I  not  only  was  never  better,  but  never 
half  so  well :  indeed  I  find  I  have  been  very  ill  all  my  hfe,  with- 
out knowing  it.  Let  me  state  some  of  the  goods  arising  from 
abstaining  from  aU  fermented  liquors.  First,  sweet  sleep  ;  having 
never  known  what  sweet  sleep  Avas,  I  sleep  like  a  baby  or  a 
ploughboy.  If  I  wake,  no  needless  terrors,  no  black  visions  of 
life,  but  pleasing  hopes  and  pleasing  recollections  :  Holland  House, 
past  and  to  come !  If  I  dream,  it  is  not  of  lions  and  tigers,  but 
of  Easter  dues  and  tithes.  Secondly,  I  can  take  longer  walk?, 
and  make  greater  exertions,  without  fatigue.  My  understanding 
is  improved,  and  I  comprehend  Political  Economy.  I  see  better 
without  wine  and  spectacles  than  when  I  used  both.  Only  one 
evil  ensues  from  it :  I  am  in  such  extravagant  spirits  that  I  must 
lose  blood,  or  look  out  for  some  one  who  wiU  bore  and  depress  me. 
Pray  leave  off  wine :  the  stomach  quite  at  rest ;  no  heartburn  no 
pain,  no  distension. 


MALTHU3.  401 

TO    THOMAS    MOORE.* 

{London,  1831.)  My  dear  Moore  :  By  the  beard  of  the  prelite 
of  Canterbury,  by  the  cassock  of  the  prelate  of  York,  by  the 
breakfasts  of  Rogers,  by  Luttrell's  love  of  side-dishes,  I  swear 
that  I  had  rather  hear  you  sing  than  any  person  I  ever  heard  in 
my  life,  male  or  female.  For  what  is  your  singing  but  beautiful 
poetry  floating  in  fine  music,  and  guided  by  exquisite  feeling? 
Call  me  Dissenter,  say  that  my  cassock  is  ill  put  on,  that  I  know 
not  the  delicacies  of  decimation,  and  confound  the  greater  and  the 
smaller  tithes ;  but  do  not  think  that  I  am  insensible  to  your 
music.  The  truth  is,  that  I  took  a  solemn  oath  to  Mrs.  Beauclerk, 
to  be  there  by  ten,  and  set  off,  to  prevent  perjury,  at  eleven ;  but 
was  seized  with  a  violent  pain  in  the  stomach  by  the  way,  and 
went  to  bed.     Yours  ever,  my  dear  Moore,  very  sincerely. 

Sydney  Smith. 


MALTHUS. 

{To  Lady  Holland,  Combe  Florey,  1831.)  Philosopher  Mal- 
thus  came  here  last  week.  I  got  an  agreeable  party  for  him  of 
unmarried  people.  There  was  only  one  lady  who  had  had  a  child  ; 
but  he  is  a  good-natured  man,  and,  if  there  are  no  appearances  of 
approaching  fertility,  is  civil  to  every  lady.  Malthus  is  a  real 
moral  philosopher,  and  I  would  almost  consent  to  speak  as  inarticu- 
lately, if  I  could  think  and  act  as  wisely. 


PREFERMENT. AT    COURT. 

{To  the  Countess  of  Morley,  Bristol,  1831.)  Dear  Lady  Mor- 
ley  :  I  have  taken  possession  of  my  preferment.  The  house  is  in 
Amen-corner — an  awkward  name  on  a  card,  and  an  awkward 
annunciation  to  the  coachman  on  leaving  any  fashionable  mansion. 
I  find,  too  (sweet  discovery !)  that  I  give  a  dinner  every  Sunday, 
for  tliree  months  in  the  year,  to  six  clergymen  and  six  singing- 

*  In  answer  to  a  note  of  Moore  expressing  the  regret,  that  "he  had  gone 
away  so  soon  from  Ellis's  the  other  night,  as  I  had  improved  (i.  e.,  in  my 
singing)  afterward,  and  he  was  one  of  the  few  I  always  wished  to  do  my  best 
for." — Moore's  Diary,  June  15,  1831. 


402  AT   COUET. 

men,  at  one  o'clock.  Do  me  the  fovour  to  drop  in  as  Mrs.  Mu"- 
ley.  I  did  the  duty  at  St.  Paul's;  the  organ  and  music  were  ex- 
cellent. 

I  went  to  Court,  and,  horrible  to  relate !  with  strings  to  my 
shoes  instead  of  buckles — not  from  Jacobinism,  but  ignorance. 
I  saw  two  or  three  Tory  lords  looking  at  me  with  dismay,  was 
informed  by  the  Clerk  of  the  Closet  of  my  sin,  and  gathering  my 
sacerdotal  petticoats  about  me  (like  a  lady  conscious  of  thick 
ankles),  I  escaped  further  observation.  My  residence  is  in  Febru- 
ary, March,  and  July. 


EDWAKD    IRYING. 

(To  the  Comifess  of  llorley.)  Noble  countenance,  expressing 
quite  sufficient  when  at  rest,  too  much  when  in  activity.  Middling 
voice,  provincial  accent,  occasional  bad  taste ;  language  often  very 
happy,  with  flights  of  mere  eloquence ;  not  the  vehicle  of  reason- 
ing, or  of  pi'ofound  remark.  Very  difficult,  when  the  sermon  was 
over,  to  know  what  it  was  about;  and  the  whole  effect  rather 
fati";uino;  and  tiresome. 


READING   IN   AGE. 

(To  Lady  Holland,  Combe  Florey,  1831.)  Read  Cicero's 
"  Letters  to  Atticus,"  tx^anslated  by  the  Abbe  Mongon,  with  excel- 
lent notes.  I  sit  in  my  beautiful  study,  looking  upon  a  thousand 
flowers,  and  read  agreeable  books,  in  order  to  keep  up  arguments 
with  Lord  Holland  and  Allen.  I  thank  God  heartily  for  my  com- 
fortable situation  in  my  old  age — above  my  deserts,  and  beyond 
my  former  hopes. 


TO    EARL    GREY    IN    OFFICE. 

(1831.)  Pray  keep  well,  and  do  your  best,  with  a  gay  and  crje- 
less  heart.  What  is  it  all,  but  the  scratching  of  pismires  upon  a 
heap  of  earth  ?  Rogues  are  careless  and  gay,  why  not  honest 
men  ?  Think  of  the  Bill  in  the  morning,  and  take  your  claret  in 
the  evening,  totally  forgetting  the  BiU.  You  have  done  admi- 
rably up  to  this  time. 


ANTI-CHOLERA.  •  403 

EPIGnAM    ON    PROFESSOR    AIRY, 

{To  John  Murray,  Comhe  Florey,  1832.)  We  are  living  hci-e 
with  windows  all  open,  and '  eating  our  own  ripe  grapes  grown  in 
the  open  air ;  but,  in  revenge,  there  is  no  man  within  twenty  miles 
who  knows  anything  of  history,  or  angles,  or  of  the  mind.  I  send 
Mrs.  Murray  my  epigram  on  Professor  Airy, ,  of  Cambridge,  th« 
great  astronomer  and  mathematician,  and  his  beautiful  wife  :  — 

Airy  alone  has  gained  that  double  prize 
Which  forced  musicians  to  divide  the  crown ; 

His  works  have  raised  a  mortal  to  the  skies, 
His  marriage  vows  have  drawn  an  angel  down. 


ANTI-CHOLERA. 

{To  the  Countess  Grey,  Comhe  Florey,  1832.)  The  cholera 
will  have  killed  by  the  end  of  the  year  about  one  person  in 
€very  thousand.  Therefore  it  is  a  thousand  to  one  (supposing 
the  cholera  to  travel  at  the  same  rate)  that  any  person  does 
not  die  of  the  cholera  in  any  one  year.  This  calculation  is  for  the 
mass ;  but  if  you  are  prudent,  temperate,  and  rich,  your  chance  is 
at  least  five  times  as  good  that  you  do  not  die  of  the  cholera — in 
other  words,  five  thousand  to  one  that  you  do  not  die  of  cholera  in 
a  year ;  it  is  not  far  from  two  millions  to  one  that  you  do  not  die 
any  one  day  from  cholera.  It  is  only  seven  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  to  one  that  your  house  is  not  burnt  down  any  one  day. 
Therefore  it  is  nearly  three  times  as  likely  that  your  house  should 
be  burnt  down  any  one  day,  as  that  you  should  die  of  cholera ;  or, 
it  is  as  probable  that  your  house  should  be  burnt  down  three  times 
in  any  one  year,  as  that  you  should  die  of  cholera. 


THE    HAY-FEYER. 

{To  Dr.  Holland,  Combe  Florey,  June,  1835.)  I  am  suffer- 
ing from  my  old  complaint,  the  hay -fever  (as  it  is  called).  My 
fear  is,  perishing  by  deliquescence ;  I  melt  away  in  nasal  and 
lachrymal  profluvia.  My  remedies  are  warm  pediluvium,  cathar- 
tics, topical  application  of  a  watery  solution  of  opium  to  eyes,  ears, 
and  the  interior  of  the  nostrils.     The  membrane  is  so  irritable. 


404  SYMPATHY    AND    FAHRENHEIT. 

tliat  light,  dust,  contradiction,  an  absurd  remark,  the  sight  of  a  Dis- 
senter—  anything,  sets  me  sneezing;  and  if  I  begin  sneezing  at 
twelve,  I  don't  leave  off  till  two  o'clock,  and  am  heard  distinctly  in 
Taunton,  when  the  wind  sets  that  way  —  a  distance  of  six  miles. 
Turn  your  mind  to  this  little  curse.  If  consumption  is  too  power- 
ful for  physicians,  at  least  they  should  not  suffer  themselves  to  be 
outwitted  by  such  little  upstart  disorders  as  the  hay-fever. 


OLD    AGE    TO    BE    PASSED    IN    THE    CITY. 

{To  Mrs. ,  Paris,  1835.)  '  I  suspect  the  fifth  act  of  life 

should  be  in  great  cities ;  it  is  there,  in  the  long  death  of  old  age, 
that  a  man  most  forgets  himself  and  his  infirmities ;  receives  the 
greatest  consolation  from  the  attentions  of  friends,  and  the  greatest 
diversion  from  external  circumstances. 


AFFECTION    AND    THE    THERMOMETER. 

(7b  Mrs. ,  July,  1836.)  Very  high  and  very  low  tem- 
perature extinguishes  all  human  sympathy  and  relations.  It  is 
impossible  to  feel  affection  beyond  78°,  or  below  20°  of  Fahrenheit ; 
human  nature  is  too  solid  or  too  liquid  beyond  these  limits.  Man 
only  lives  to  shiver  or  to  perspire.  God  send  that  the  glass  may 
fall,  and  restore  me  to  my  regard  for  you,  which  in  the  temperate 
zone  is  invariable. 


HIS   PORTRAIT. 

(  To  Lady  Ashburton.  With  a  Print.)  Dear  Lady  Ashburton  : 
Miss  Mildmay  told  me  yesterday  that  you  had  been  looking  about 
for  a  print  of  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith.  Here  he  is  —  pray  accept 
him.  I  said  to  the  artist,  "  Whatever  you  do,  preserve  the  ortho- 
dox look." 


DIGESTION    AND    THE    VIRTUES. 


(To  Arthur  Kinglake,    Combe   Florey,    1837.)     I   am  much 
obliged  by  the  present  of  your  brother's  booL*     I  am  convinced 
*  Bothea, 


CITY    AND    COUNTRY.  405 

digestion  is  the  great  secret  of  life  ;  and  that  character,  talents,  vir- 
tues, and  qualities,  are  powerfully  afiected  by  beef,  mutton,  pie-crust, 
and  rich  soups.  I  have  often  thought  I  could  feed  or  starve  men 
into  many  virtues  and  vices,  and  affect  them  more  powerfully  with 
my  instruments  of  cookery  than  Timotheus  could  do  formerly  with 
his  lyre. 


TOWN    AND    COUNTRY. 

{To  Miss  G.  Harcourt,  London,  1838.)  The  summer  and 
the  country,  dear  Georgiana,  have  no  charms  for  me.  I  look  for- 
ward anxiously  to  the  return  of  bad  weather,  coal  fires,  and  good 
society,  in  a  crowded  city.  I  have  no  relish  for  the  country ;  it  is 
a  kind  of  healthy  grave.  I  am  afraid  you  are  not  exemjjt  from  the 
delusions  of  flowers,  gi-een  turf,  and  birds ;  they  all  afford  slight 
gratification,  but  not  worth  an  hour  of  rational  conversation  :  and 
rational  conversation  in  sufficient  quantities  is  only  to  be  had  from 
the  congregation  of  a  million  of  people  in  one  spot.  Grod  bless 
you! 


A    PARODY. 

(7b  Lady  Davy,  London,  1840.)  Do  you  remember  that 
passage  in  the  "  Paradise  Lost,"  which  is  considered  so  beautiful  ? 

"  As  one  who,  long  in  populous  cities  pent, 
Where  houses  thick  and  sewers  annoy  the  air, 
Forth  issuing  on  a  summer's  mom,  to  breathe 
Among  the  pleasant  villages  and  farms 
Adjoined,  from  each  thing  met  conceives  delight : 
The  smell  of  grain,  or  tedded  grass,  or  kine. 
Or  flowers  :  each  rural  sight,  each  rural  sound. 
If  chance  with  nymph-like  step  fair  virgin  pass. 
What  pleasing  seemed,  for  her  now  pleases  more. 
She  most ;  and  in  her  look  sums  .all  delight." 

I  think  this  simile  very  unjust  to  London,  and  I  have  amended 
the  passage.  I  read  it  over  to  Lady  Charlotte  Lindsay  and  the 
Miss  Berrys.  The  question  was,  whom  the  gentleman  should  see 
first  when  he  arrived  in  London ;  and  after  various  proposals,  it 
was  at  last  imanimously  agreed  it  must  be  you ;  so  it  stands 
thus : — 


406  WEBSTER. 

"  As  one  who,  long  in  rural  hamlets  pent, 
Where  squires  and  parsons  deep  potations  make. 
With  lengthened  tale  of  fox  or  timid  hare. 
Or  antlered  stag,  sore  vexed  by  hound  and  horn, 
Forth  issuing  on  a  winter's  morn,  to  reach 
In  chaise  or  coach  the  London  Babylon 
Remote,  from  each  thing  met  conceives  delight ; 
Or  cab,  or  car,  or  evening  muffin-bell, 
Or  lamps  :  each  city  sight,  each  city  sound. 
If  chance  with  nymph-like  step  the  Daiiy  pass, 
What  pleasing  seemed,  for  her  now  pleases  more. 
She  most ;  and  in  her  look  sums  all  delight." 

I  tried  the  verses  with  names  of  other  ladies,  but  the  universal 
opinion  was,  in  the  conclave  of  your  friends,  that  it  must  be  you ; 
and  this  told,  now  tell  me,  dear  Lady  Davy,  how  do  you  do? 
Shall  we  ever  see  you  again  ?  We  are  dying  very  fast  here ; 
come  and  take  another  look  at  us.  Mrs.  Sydney  is  in  the  country 
in  rather  bad  health ;  I  am  (gout  and  asthma  excepted)  very  well. 


DANIEL    WEBSTER. 

{To  Mrs.  Grote,  London,  1839.J  The  "  Great  Western"  turns 
out  very  well — grand,  simple,  cold,  slow,  wise,  and  good. 

[When  Mr.  Webster,  says  Lady  Holland  (Mem.  p.  252),  was 
Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs  for  the  United  States,  my  father 
heard  it  reported  from  America  that  an  accidental  mistake  he  had 
made,  in  introducing  Mr.  Webster,  on  his  coming  to  this  country 
some  time  before  (I  believe  to  Lord  Brougham),  under  the  name 
of  Mr.  Clay,  was  intentional,  and  by  way  of  joke.  Annoyed  that 
so  much  impertinence  and  bad  taste  should  be  imputed  to  him,  he 
wrote  a  few  lines  of  explanation  to  Mr.  Webster,  to  which  he  re- 
ceived the  following  answer.] 

"  Washington,  1841.  My  Dear  Sir:  Though  exceedingly  de- 
lighted to  hear  from  you,  I  am  yet  much  pained  by  the  contents  of 
your  note ;  not  so  much,  however,  as  I  should  be,  were  I  not  able 
to  give  a  peremptory  denial  to  the  whole  report.  I  never  men- 
tioned the  incident  to  which  you  refer,  as  a  joke  of  yours — far 
from  it ;  nor  did  I  mention  it  as  anything  extraordinary. 

"  My  dear,  good  friend,  do  not  think  me  such  a as  to  quote 

or  refer  to  any  incident  falling  out  between  you  and  me  to  your 


DICKENS.  407 
n 
disadvantage.  Tlxe  pleasure  of  your  acquaintance  is  one  of  the 
jewels  I  brought  home  with  me.  I  had  read  of  you,  and  read  you 
for  thirty  years.  I  was  delighted  to  meet  you,  and  to  have  all  I 
know  of  you  refreshed  and  brightened  by  the  charms  of  your  con- 
versation.    If  any  son  of asserts  that  either  through  ill-will, 

or  love  of  vulgar  gossip,  I  tell  such  things  of  you  as  you  suppose, 
I  pray  you,  let  him  be  knocked  down  instanter.  And  be  assured, 
my  dear  sir,  I  never  spoke  of  you  in  my  life  but  with  gratitude, 
respect,  and  attiichment.  "  D.  Webster." 

To  this  Smith  wrote  in  reply : — • 

"  Many  thanks,  my  dear  sir,  for  your  obliging  letter.  I  think 
better  of  myself,  because  you  think  well  of  me.  If,  in  the  imbe- 
cility of  old  age,  I  forgot  your  name  for  a  moment,  the  history  of 
America  will  hereafter  be  more  tenacious  in  its  recollections  — 
tenacious  because  you  are  using  your  eloquent  wisdom  to  restrain 
the  high  spirit  of  your  countrymen  within  the  limits  of  justice,  and 
are  securing  to  two  kindred  nations,  who  ought  to  admire  and  ben- 
efit each  other,  the  blessings  of  peace.  How  can  great  talent  be 
applied  to  nobler  ends,  and  what  existence  can  be  more  truly 
splendid  ?  Ever  sincerely  yours, 

"  Sydney  Smith." 


CHARLES    DICKENS.* 

{To  Sir  George  Philips,  about  1838.) — Nickleby  is  very  good. 
I  stood  out  against  Mr.  Dickens  as  long  as  I  could,  but  he  has 
conquered  me. 

(7b  Charles  Dickens,  June  11,  1839.)  My  dear  Sir:  No- 
body more,  and  more  justly,  talked  of  than  yourself. 

The  ]\Iiss  Berrys,  now  at  Richmond,  live  only  to  become 
acquainted  with  you,  and  have  commissioned  me  to  request  you 
to  dine  with  them  Friday,  the  29th,  or  Monday,  July  1st,  to  meet 
a  Canon  of  St.  Paul's,  the  Rector  of  Combe  Florey,  and  the  Vicar 
of  Halberton — all  equally  well  known  to  you  ;  to  say  nothing  of 

*  Dickens  has  paid  a  genial  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Sydney  Smith,  in  a 
paper  in  his  happiest  vein  of  irony,  in  Household  Words,  Sept.  8,  1855.  Ha 
treats  the  biography  as  a  myth,  a  story  of  impossible  virtue,  a  satire  on  ti^e 
whig  party  who  left  such  fabulous  merits  so  long  unrewarded. 


408  CHUZZLEWIT. 

other  and  better  people.  The  Miss  Berrys  and  Lady  Charlotte 
Lindsay  have  not  the  smallest  objection  to  be  put  into  a  Number, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  would  be  proud  of  the  distinction ;  and  Lady 
Charlotte,  in  particular,  you  may  marry  to  Newman  Noggs. 
Pray  come ;  it  is  as  much  as  my  place  is  worth  to  send  them  a 
refusal. 

(J/ai/ 14,  1842.)  My  dear  Dickens:  I  accept  your  obliging 
invitation  conditionally.  If  I  am  invited  by  any  man  of  greater 
genius  than  yourself,  or  one  by  whose  works  I  have  been  more 
completely  interested,  I  will  repudiate  you,  and  dine  with  the  more 
splendid  phenomenon  of  the  two. 

{To  Charles  Dickens,  Esq.,  January  6,  1843.)  My  dear  Sir: 
You  have  been  so  used  to  these  sort  of  impertinences,  that  I  be- 
lieve you  will  excuse  me  for  saying  how  very  much  I  am  pleased 
Avith  the  first  number  of  your  new  work.  Pecksniff  and  his 
daughters,  and  Pinch,  are  admirable  —  quite  first-rate  painting, 
such  as  no  one  but  yourself  can  execute. 

I  did  not  like  your  genealogy  of  the  Chuzzlewits,  and  I  must 
wait  a  little  to  see  how  Martin  turns  out ;  I  am  impatient  for  the  next 
number. 

Pray  come  and  see  me  next  summer ;  and  believe  me  ever 
yours. 

P.  S.  —  ChufFey  is  admirable.  I  never  read  a  finer  piece  of 
writing ;  it  is  deeply  pathetic  and  affecting.  Your  last  number 
is  excellent.  Don't  give  yourself  the  trouble  to  answer  my  im- 
pertinent eulogies,  only  excuse  them.     Ever  yours. 

{To  Charles  Dichens,  Esq.,  56  Green  Street,  July  1,  1843.) 
Dear  Dickens  :  Excellent !  nothing  can  be  better !  You  must  settle 
it  with  the  Americans  as  you  can,  but  I  have  nothing  to  do  with 
that.  I  have  only  to  certify  that  the  number  is  full  of  wit,  humo;  r, 
and  power  of  description. 

I  am  slowy  recovering  from  an  attack  of  gout  in  the  knee,  and 
am  very  sorry  to  have  missed  you. 

{To  Charles  Dickens,  b%  Green  Street,  Feb.  21,  1844.)  Dear 
Dickens:  Many  thanks  for  the  "Christmas  Carol,"  which  T  shall 


GOUT.  409 

immediately  proceed  upon,  in  preference  to  six  American  pam- 
phlets I  found  upon  my  arrival,  all  promising  immediate  payment ! 
Yours  ever. 


A    BREAKFAST. 


(  To  Mrs. ,  Green  Street,  April  8,  1840.)     Dear  Mrs.  ■ : 

I  wish  I  may  be  able  to  come  on  Monday,  but  I  doubt.  "Will 
you  come  to  a  philoso])hical  breakfast  on  Saturday  —  ten  o'clock 
precisely?  Nothing  taken  for  granted!  Everything  (except  the 
Thirty -nine  Articles)  called  in  question  —  real  philosophers! 


INVITATION    TO    THE    OPERA. 

(7b  Mrs.  Meynell,  Green  Street,  June,  1840.)  Thy  servant  is 
threescore-and-ten  years  old ;  can  he  hear  the  sound  of  singing 
men  and  singing  women  ?  A  Canon  at  the  Opera  !  Where  have 
you  lived  ?  In  what  habitations  of  the  heathen?  I  thank  yoa, 
shuddering ;  and  am  ever  your  unseducible  friend. 


GOUT. 


(7b  the  Countess  of  Carlisle^  1840.)  "Wliat  a  very  singular 
disease  gout  is!  It  seems  as  if  the  stomach  fell  down  into  the 
feet.  The  smallest  deviation  from  right  diet  is  immediately  pun- 
ished by  limping  and  lameness,  and  the  innocent  ankle  and  blame- 
less instep  are  tortured  for  the  vices  of  the  nobler  organs.  The 
stomach  having  found  this  easy  way  of  getting  rid  of  inconvenien- 
ces, becomes  cruelly  despotic,  and  punishes  for  the  least  offences. 
A  plum,  a  glass  of  Champagne,  excess  in  joy,  excess  in  grief — 
any  crime,  however  small,  is  sufficient  for  redness,  swelling,  spasms, 
and  large  shoes. 


VISIT    TO    AMERICA. 

I  To  the  Countess  Grey,  1841.)  I  hear  Morpeth  is  going  to 
America,  a  resolution  I  think  very  wise,  and  which  I  should 
decidedly  carry  into  execution  myself,  if  I  were  not  going  to 
Heaven. 

18 


410  ST.    ANTHONY. 

BOMBARDING    THE    ASIATICS.      . 

{To  the  Countess  Ghry,  Oct.  1841.)  The  news  from  China 
gives  me  the  greatest  pleasure.  I  am  for  bombarding  all  the 
exclusive  Asiatics,  who  shut  up  the  earth,  and  will  not  let  me 
walk  civilly  and  quietly  through  it,  doing  no  harm,  and  paying 
for  all  I  want. 


ST.   ANTHONY. 

{To  Lady  Ashburton,  1841.)  You  have  very  naturally,  my  dear 
Lady  Ashburton,  referred  to  me  for  some  information  respecting 
St.  Anthony.  The  principal  anecdotes  related  of  him  are,  that 
he  was  rather  careless  of  his  diet ;  and  that,  instead  of  confining 
himself  to  boiled  mutton  and  a  little  wine  and  water,  he  ate  of 
side-dishes,  and  drank  two  glasses  of  sherry,  and  refused  to  lead  a 
life  of  great  care  and  circumspection,  such  as  his  constitution  re- 
quired. The  consequence  was,  that  his  friends  were  often  alarmeo 
at  his  health ;  and  the  medical  men  of  Jerusalem  and  Jericho  wen 
in  constant  requisition,  taking  exorbitant  fees,  and  doing  him  litth 
good. 


CORRESPONDENCE SUSAN   HOPLEY PUSEYITE. 

{To  Mrs.  Orowe*  Comhe  Florey,  Jan.  31,  1841.)  Dear  Mrs. 
Crowe :  I  quite  agree  with  you  as  to  the  horrors  of  correspond- 
ence. Correspondences  are  like  small-clothes  before  the  invention 
of  suspenders ;  it  is  impossible  to  keep  them  up. 

That  episode  of  Julia  [in  Susan  Hopley]  is  much  too  long.  Your 
incidents  are  remarkable  for  their  impi»bability.  A  boy  goes  on 
board  a  frigate  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  penetrates  to  the  cap- 
tain's cabin  without  being  seen  or  challenged.  Susan  climbs  into  a 
two-pair-of-stairs  window  to  rescue  two  grenadiers.  A  gentleman 
about  to  be  murdered  is  saved  by  rescuing  a  woman  about 
to  be  drowned,  and  so  on.  The  language  is  easy,  the  dialogue 
natural.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  humour ;  the  plot  is  too  comph- 
cated.     The  best  part  of  the  book  is  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ay  ton  ;  but 

*  Mrs.  Catherine  Crowe,  author  of  the  Adventures  of  Susan  Hopley,  Lilly 
Dawson,  The  Night-Side  of  Nature,  and  other  works. 


PUSEYISM.  411 

the  highest  and  most  important  praise  of  the  novel  is  that  you 
are  carried  on  eagerly,  and  that  it  excites  and  sustains  a  great 
interest  m  the  event,  and  therefore  I  think  it  a  very  good  novel 
and  will  recommend  it. 

It  is  in  vain  that  I  study  the  subject  of  the  Scotch  Church.  I 
hav(!  heard  it  ten  times  over  from  Murray,  and  twenty  times  from 
Jeffrey,  and  I  have  not  the  smallest  conception  what  it  is  about. 
1  know  it  has  something  to  do  with  oat-meal,  but  beyond  that  I  am ' 
in  utter  darkness.  Everyl)ody  here  is  turning  Puseyite.  Having 
worn  out  my  black  gown,  I  preach  in  my  surplice ;  this  is  all  the 
change  I  have  made,  or  mean  to  make. 

There  seems  to  be  in  your  letter  a  deep-rooted  love  of  the 
amusements  of  the  world.  Instead  of  the  ever-gay  Murray  and 
the  never-silent  Jeffrey,  why  do  you  not  cultivate  the  Scotch 
clergy  and  the  elders  and  professors  ?  I  should  then  have  some 
hopes  of  you. 


PUSEYISM. 

{To  Lady  Ashhurton,  1841.)  Still  I  can  preach  a  little;  and 
I  wish  you  had  witnessed,  the  other  day  at  St.  Paul's,  my  in- 
credible boldness  in  attacking  the  Puseyites.  I  told  them  that 
they  made  the  Christian  religion  a  religion  of  postures  and  cere- 
monies, of  circumflexions  and  genuflexions,  of  garments  and  ves- 
tures, of  ostentation  and  parade ;  that  they  took  up  tithe  of  mint 
and  cummin,  and  neglected  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law — 
justice,  mercy,  and  the  duties  of  life,  and  so  forth. 

{To  Lady  Davy,  1842.)  I  have  not  yet  discovered  of  what  I 
am  to  die,  but  I  rather  believe  I  shall  be  burnt  alive  by  the 
Puseyites.  Nothing  so  remarkable  in  England  as  the  progress  of 
these  foolish  people.  I  have  no  conception  what  they  mean,  if  it 
be  not  to  revive  every  absurd  ceremony,  and  every  antiquated 
folly,  which  the  common  sense  of  mankind  has  set  to  sleep. 
You  will  find  at  your  return  a  fanatical  Church  of  England,  but 
pray  do  not  let  it  prevent  your  return.  We  can  always  gather 
together,  in  Park  Street  and  Green  Street  a  chosen  few  who  have 
never  bowed  the  knee  to  Rimmon. 


412  BLUECOAT  THEORY. 

A  BORE. 

(7b    Mrs.  ,    Green  Street,    Grosvenor    Square,   March   5, 

1841.)     My  dear  Mrs.  :  At  the   sight  of ,  away  iiy 

gayety,  ease,  carelessness,  happiness.  Effusions  are  checked,  faces 
are  puckered  up ;  coldness,  formality,  and  reserve,  are  diffused 
over  the  room,  and  the  social  temperature  falls  down  to  zero.  I 
could  not  stand  it.  I  know  you  will  forgive  me,  biit  my  con- 
stitution is  shattered,  and  I  have  not  nerves  for  such  an  occur- 
rence. 


AVERSIONS   AND    ARGUMENTS. 

{To  Mrs. ;  March  6,  1841.)     My  dear  Mrs. :  Did 

you  never  hear  of  persons  who  have  an  aversion  to  cheese  ?  to 
cats  ?  to  roast  hare  ?  Can  you  reason  them  out  of  it  ?  Can  you 
write  them  out  of  it?  Would  it  be  of  any  use  to  mention  the 
names  of  mongers  who  have  lived  in  the  midst  of  cheese  ?  Would 
it  advance  your  cause  to  insist  upon  the  story  of  Whittington  and 
his  Cat? 


BLUECOAT    THEORY. 

{To  the  Countess  of  Morley.  No  date.)  Dear  Lady  Morley: 
Pray  understand  me  rightly:  I  do  not  give  the  Bluecoat  theory  as 
an  established  fact,  but  as  a  highly  probable  conjecture ;  look  at 
the  circumstances.  At  a  very  early  age  young  Quakers  disappear, 
at  a  very  early  age  the  Coat-boys  are  seen ;  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen or  eighteen  young  Quakers  are  again  seen ;  at  the  same  age, 
the  Coat-boys  disappear :  who  has  ever  heard  of  a  Coat-man  ? 
The  things  is  utterly  unknown  in  natural  history.  Upon  whai^ 
other  evidence  does  the  migration  of  the  grub  into  the  aurelia 
rest  ?  After  a  certain  number  of  days  the  grub  is  no  more  seen, 
and  the  aurelia  flutters  over  his  relics.  That  such  a  prominenr 
fact  should  have  escaped  our  naturalists  is  truly  astonishing ;  I 
had  long  suspected  it,  but  was  afraid  to  come  out  with  a  specula- 
tion so  bold,  and  now  mention  it  as  protected  and  sanctioned  by 
you. 

Dissection  would  throw  great  light  upon  the  question ;  and  if 


QUAKER   BABIES.  413 

our  friend would  receive  two  boys  iuto  his  house  about  the 

time  of  their  changing  their  coats,  great  service  would  be  rendered 
to  the  cause. 

Our  friend  Lord  Grey,  not  remarkable  for  his  attention  to  nat- 
ural history,  was  a  good  deal  struck  with  the  novelty  and  in- 
genuity of  the  hypothesis.  I  have  ascertained  that  the  young 
Blue-coat  infants  are  fed  with  drab-coloured  pap,  which  looks  very 
suspicious.  More  hereafter  on  this  interesting  subject.  Where 
real  science  is  to  be  promoted,  I  will  make  no  apology  to  your 
Ladyship  for  this  intrusion. 

Yours  truly,  Sydney  Smith. 

{From  the  Countess  of  Morley.  No  date.)  Had  I  received 
your  letter  two  days  since,  I  should  have  said  your  arguments  and 
theory  were  perfectly  convincing,  and  that  the  most  obstinate  skeptic 
must  have  yielded  to  them  ;  but  I  have  come  across  a  person  in 
that  interval  who  gives  me  information  which  puts  us  all  at  sea 
again.  That  the  Bluecoat  boy  should  be  the  larva  of  the  Quaker 
in  Great  Britain  is  possible,  and  even  probable,  but  we  must  take 
a  wider  view  of  the  question ;  and  here,  I  confess,  I  am  bewildered 
by  doubts  and  difficulties.  The  Bluecoat  is  an  indigenous  animal 
— not  so  the  Quaker;  and  now  be  so  good  as  to  give  your  whole 
mind  to  the  fects  I  have  to  communicate.  I  have  seen  and  talked 
much  with  Sir  R.  Kerr  Porter  on  this  interesting  subject.  He 
has  travelled  over  the  whole  habitable  globe,  and  has  penetrated 
with  a  scientific  and  scrutinizing  eye  into  regions  hitherto  unex- 
plored by  civilized  man ;  and  yet  he  has  never  seen  a  Quaker 
baby.  He  has  lived  for  years  in  Philadelphia  (the  national  nest 
of  Quakers) ;  he  has  roamed  up  and  down  Broadways  and  length- 
ways in  every  nook  and  corner  of  Pennsylvania ;  and  yet  he  never 
saw  a  Quaker  baby ;  and  what  is  new  and  most  striking,  never 
did  he  see  a  Quaker  lady  li  a  situation  which  gave  hope  that  a 
Quaker  baby  might  be  seen  hereafter.  This  is  a  stunning  fact, 
and  involving  the  question  in  such  impenetrable  mystery  as  will, 
I  fear,  defy  even  your  sagacity,  acuteness,  and  industry,  to  eluci- 
date. But  let  us  not  be  checked  and  cast  down ;  truth  is  the  end 
and  object  of  our  research.  Let  us  not  bate  one  jot  of  heart  and 
hope,  but  still  bear  up  and  steer  our  course  right  onward. 

Yours  most  truly,  F.  Morley. 


414  THE  OPEEA. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT  OF  GAME. 

(^To  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Barham,  London,  about  1842.)  Many 
thanks,  my  dear  Sir,  for  your  kind  present  of  game.  If  there  is 
a  pure  and  elevated  pleasure  in  this  world,  it  is  that  of  roast  pheas- 
ant and  bread  sauce; — barn-door  fowls  for  dissenters,  but  for  the 
real  churchman,  the  thirty-nine  times  articled  clerk — the  pheas- 
ant, the  pheasant  !* 


ALLEN OLD    AGE. 

(To  Lady  Holland,  Combe  Florey,  Sept.  13,  1842.)  I  am 
(Borry  to  hear  Allen  is  not  well ;  but  the  reduction  of  his  legs  is  a 
pure  and  unmixed  good;  they  are  enormous  —  they  are  clerical! 
He  has  the  creed  of  a  philosopher  and  the  legs  of  a  clergyman ;  I 
never  saw  such  legs  —  at  least,  belonging  to  a  layman. 

It  is  a  bore,  I  admit,  to  be  past  seventy,  for  you  are  left  for  ex- 
ecution, and  are  daily  expecting  the  death-warrant;  but,  as  you 
say,  it  is  not  anything  very  capital  we  quit.  We  are,  at  the  close 
of  life,  only  hurried  away  from  stomach-aches,  pains  in  the  joints, 
from  sleepless  nights  and  unamusing  days,  from  weakness,  ugli- 
ness, and  nervous  tremors ;  but  we  shall  all  meet  again  in  another 

planet,  cured  of  all  our  defects.     will  be  less  irritable  ;  

more  silent ;  will  assent ;  Jeffrey  will  speak  slower ;  Bobus 

will  be  just  as  he  is ;  I  shall  be  more  respectful  to  the  upper 
clergy ;  but  I  shall  have  as  lively  a  sense  as  I  now  have  of  all 
your  kindness  and  affection  for  me. 


INVITATION    TO    "  SEMIRAMIS." 

{To  Lady  Holland,  November  6,  1842.)  My  dear  Lady  Hol- 
land :  I  have  not  the  heart,  when  an  amiable  lady  says,  "  Come  to 
*  Semiramis'  in  my  box,"  to  decline ;  but  I  get  bolder  at  a  distance. 
*'  Semiramis"  would  be  to  me  pure  misery.  I  love  music  very 
little  —  I  hate  acting ;  I  have  the  worst  opinion  of  Semiramis  her- 
self, and  the  whole  thing  (I  can  not  help  it)  seems  so  childish  and 
so  foolish  that  I  can  not  abide  it.  Moreover,  it  would  be  rather 
out  of  etiquette  for  a  Canon  of  St.  Paul's  to  go  to  an  opera ;  and 

*  Memoir  of  Barham. 


EVERETT.  415 

where  etiquette  prevents  me  from  doing  things  disagreeable  to 
myself,  I  am  a  perfect  martinet. 

All  these  tilings  considered,  I  am  sure  you  will  not  be  a  Semi- 
ramis  to  me,  but  let  me  off. 


DYING    SPEECHES. 

{To  Miss  Berry,  1843.)  I  am  studying  the  death  of  Louis  X\^. 
Did  he  die  heroically  ?  or  did  he  struggle  on  the  scaffold  ?  Was 
that  struggle  (for  I  believe  there  was  one)  for  permission  to 
speak?  or  from  indignation  at  not  being  suffered  to  act  for  himself 
at  the  last  moment,  and  to  place  himself  under  the  axe  ?  Make 
this  out  for  me,  if  you  please,  and  speak  of  it  to  me  when  I  come 
to  London.  I  don't  believe  the  Abbe  Edgeworth's  "  Son  of  St. 
Louis,  montez  au  del!"  It  seems  necessary  that  great  peoi^le 
should  die  with  some  sonorous  and  quota)  )le  saying.  Mr.  Pitt 
said  something  not  intelligible  in  his  last  moments :  G.  Rose  made 
it  out  to  be,  "  Save  my  country,  Heaven !"  The  nurse  on  being 
interrogated,  said  that  he  asked  for  barley-water. 


EDWARD    EVERETT AMERICAN    DEBTS. 

{To  Mrs.  Holland,  Combe  Florcy,  Jan.  31,  1844.)  Everett, 
the  American  Minister,  has  been  here  at  the  same  time  with  my 
eldest  brother.  We  all  liked  him,  and  were  confirmed  in  our  good 
opinion  of  him.  A  sensible,  unassuming  man,  always  wise  and 
reasonable.        *         *         *         *         *         *         *         ** 

[This  visit  appears  to  have  called  forth  some  comments  from  a 
portion  of  the  American  Press  which  were  met  by  the  following 
from  Sydney  Smith.] 

{Letter  to  the  Editor  of  the  Morning  Chronicle.)  Sir:  The 
Locofoco  papers  in  America  are,  I  observe,  full  of  abuse  of  Mr. 
Everett,  their  minister,  for  spending  a  month  with  me  at  Christ- 
mas, in  Somersetshire.  That  month  w^as  neither  lunar  nor  calen- 
dar, but  consisted  of  forty  eight  hours  —  a  few  minutes  more  or 
less. 

I  never  heard  a  wiser  or  more  judicious  defence  than  he  made 
to  me  and  others  of  the  American  insolvency ;  not  denying  the  in- 


il3  THE    AMIABLE    AMERICAN. 

justice  of  it  —  speaking  of  it,  on  the  contrary,  witli  the  deepest 
feehng,  but  urging  with  great  argumentative  eloquence  every  topic 
that  could  be  pleaded  in  extenuation.  He  made  upon  us  the  same 
impression  he  appears  to  make  universally  in  this  country ;  v^'e 
thought  him  (a  character  which  the  English  always  receive  with 
affectionate  regard),  an  amiable  American,  republican  wathout 
rudeness,  and  accomplished  without  ostentation !  "  If  I  had  known 
that  gentleman  five  years  ago,"  said  one  of  my  guests,  "  I  should 
have  been  deep  in  the  American  funds ;  and  as  it  is,  I  think  at 
times  that  I  see  195.  or  205.  in  the  pound,  in  his  face." 

However  this  may  be,  I  am  sure  we  owe  to  the  Americans  a 
debt  of  gratitude  for  sending  to  us  such  an  excellent  specimen  of 
their  productions.  In  diplomacy  a  far  more  important  object  than 
falsehood  is  to  keep  two  nations  in  friendship.  In  this  point,  no 
nation  has  ever  been  better  served  than  America  has  been  served 
by  Mr.  Edward  Everett. 

I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant,  Sydney  Smith. 

April,  17,  1844. 


TABLE-TALK.  4 1 7 


TABLE-TALK— ANECDOTES.* 


JEFFREY  AND  THE  NORTH  POLE. 

The  reigning  bore  at  tliis  time  in  Edinburgh  (at  the  beginning 

of  the  century),  -was  ;   his  favourite  subject,  the  North 

Pole.  It  mattered  not  how  far  south  you  began,  you  found  your- 
self transported  to  the  north  pole  before  you  could  take  breath ; 
no  one  escaped  him.  My  father  declared  he  should  invent  a  shp- 
button.  Jeffrey  fled  from  him  as  from  the  plague,  when  possible ; 
but  one  day  his  arch-tormentor  met  him  in  a  narrow  lane,  and 
began  instantly  on  the  north  pole.  Jeffrey,  in  despair  and  out  of 
all  patience,  darted  past  him,  exclaiming,  "  Damn  the  north  pole  !"* 
My  father  met  him  shortly  after,  boiUng  with  indignation  at  Jef- 
frey's contempt  of  the  north  pole,  "  Oh,  my  dear  fellow,"  said  my 
father,  "  never  mind  ;  no  one  minds  what  Jeffrey  says,  you  knovi  , 
he  is  a  privileged  person  ;  he  respects  nothing,  absolutely  nothing. 
Why,  you  will  scarcely  believe  it,  but  it  is  not  more  than  a  week 
ago  that  I  heard  him  speak  disrespectfully  of  the  equator !" 


LINES    ON   JEFFREY. 

Among  our  rural  delights  at  Heslington  (says  Lady  Holland), 
was  the  possession  of  a  young  donkey,  which  had  been  given  up 
to  our  tender  mercies  from  the  time  of  its  birth,  and  m  whose 

*  Except  where  otherwise  credited,  the  following  anecdotes  of  Sydney 
Smith's  conversation  are  derived  from  the  Memoir  by  Lady  Holland. 

t  "  I  see  this  anecdote,"  says  Lady  Holland,  "  in  Mr.  Moore's  Memoirs 
nLtributed  to  Leslie,  but  I  have  so  often  heard  it  told  as  applying  to  a  very 
diSerent  person,  that  I  thiak  he  was  mistaken." 

lb* 


4.13  JEFFREY. 

education  we  employed  a  large  portion  of  our  spare  time ;  and  a 
most  accomplished  donkey  it  became  under  our  tuition.  It  would 
walk  up-stairs,  pick  pockets,  follow  us  in  our  walks  like  a  huge 
Newfoundland  dog ;  at  the  most  distant  sight  of  us  in  the  field, 
with  ears  down  and  tail  erect,  it  set  off  in  full  bray  to  meet  us. 
These  demonstrations  on  Bitty's  part  were  met  with  not  less  affection 
on  ours,  and  Bitty  was  almost  considei'cd  a  member  of  the  family. 
One  day,  when  my  elder  brother  and  myself  were  training  our 
beloved  Bitty,  with  a  pocket-handkerchif^f  for  a  bridle,  and  his 
head  crowned  with  flowers,  to  run  round  our  garden,  who  should 
arrive  in  the  midst  of  our  sport  but  Mr.  Jeffrey.  Finding  my 
father  out,  he,  with  his  usual  kindness  toward  young  people,  imme- 
diately joined  in  our  sport,  and,  to  our  infinite  delight,  mounted 
our  donkey.  He  was  proceeding  in  ti'iumph,  a,ir;idst  our  shouts 
of  laughter,  when  my  father  and  mother,  in  company,  I  believe, 
with  Mr.  Horner  and  Mr.  IMurray,  returned  from  their  walk,  and 
beheld  this  scene  from  the  garden-door.  Though  years  and  years 
have  passed  away  since,  I  still  remember  the  joy -inspiring  laughter 
that  burst  from  my  father  at  this  unexpected  sight,  as,  advancing 
toward  his  old  friend,  with  a  face  beaming  with  delight  and  with 
extended  hands,  he  broke  forth  in  the  following  impromptu : — 

"  Witty  as  Horatius  Flaccus, 
As  great  a  Jacobin  as  Gracchus  ; 
Short,  though  not  as  fat^  as  Bacchus, 
Riding  on  a  little  jackass." 

These  lines  were  afterward  repeated  by  some  one  to  Mr. , 


at  Holland  House,  just  before  he  was  introduced  for  the  first  time 
to  Mr.  .Jeffrey,  and  they  caught  his  fancy  to  such  a  degree  that  he 
could  not  get  them  out  of  his  head,  but  kept  repeating  them  in  a 
low  voice  all  the  time  Mr.  Jeffrey  was  conversing  with  him. 


SENSIBILITY    OF    CHILDHOOD. 

Once,  when  we  were  on  a  visit  at  Lord 's,  we  were  sit- 
ting with  a  large  party  at  luncheon,  when  our  host's  eldest  son,  a 
fine  boy  of  between  eight  and  nine,  burst  into  the  room,  and,  run- 
ning up  to  his  father,  began  a  playful  skirmish  with  him ;  the 
boy,  half  in  play,  half  in  earnest,  hit  his  father  m  the  face,  whoi 


STAGE-COACH   SCENE.                                    419 
to  carry  on  the  joke,  put  up  both  his  hands,  saying,  "  Oh,  B , 


you  have  put  out  my  eye."  In  an  instant  the  blood  mounted  to 
the  boy's  temples,  he  flung  his  little  arms  ai'ound  his  father,  and 
sobbed  in  such  a  paroxysm  of  grief  and  despair,  that  it  was  some 
time  before  even  his  fatlier's  two  bright  eyes  beaming  on  him  with 
pleasure  could  convince  him  of  the  truth,  and  restore  him  to  tran- 
quillity. 

When  he  left  the  room,  my  father,  who  had  silently  looked  with 
much  interest  and  emotion  on  the  scene,  said,  ''  I  congratulate  you  ; 
I  guarantee  that  boy ;  make  your  hearts  easy ;  however  he  may 
be  tossed  about  the  world,  with  those  feelings,  and  such  a  heart, 
he  will  come  out  unscathed." 

The  father  (continues  Lady  Holland),  one  of  those  who  consider 
their  fortune  but  as  a  loan,  to  be  employed  in  spreading  an  atmo- 
sphere of  virtue  and  happiness  around  them  as  far  as  their  influence 
reaches,  is  now  no  more,  and  this  son  occupies  his  place  ;  but  his  wid- 
owed mother  the  other  day  reminded  me  how  true  the  prophecy  had 
proved ;  and  the  scene  was  so  touching  that  I  cannot  resist  giving  it. 


STAGE-COACH    TRAVELLING. 

In  1820,  my  father  (writes  Lady  Holland)  went  on  a  visit  of 
a  few  days  to  Lord  Grey's ;  then  to  Edinburgh  to  see  Jeifrey  and 
his  other  old  friends ;  and  returned  by  Lord  Lauderdale's  house 
at  Dunbar.  Speaking  of  this  journey,  he  says,  "  Most  people 
sulk  in  stage-coaches,  I  always  talk.  I  have  had  some  amusing 
journeys  from  this  habit.  On  one  occasion,  a  gentleman  in 
the  coach  with  me,  with  whom  I  had  been  conversing  for  some 
time,  suddenly  looked  out  of  the  window  as  we  approached 
York  and  said,  '  There  is  a  very  clever  man,  they  say,  but  a 
d —  odd  fellow,  lives  near  here  —  Sydney  Smith,  I  believe.'  '  He 
may  be  a  very  odd  fellow,'  said  I,  taking  off  my  hat  to  him 
and  laughing,  '  and  I  dare  say  he  is ;  but  odd  as  he  is,  he  is  here, 
very  much  at  your  service.'  Poor  man !  I  thought  he  would 
have  sunk  into  his  boots,  and  vanished  through  the  bed  of  the 
carriage,  he  was  so  distressed ;  but  I  thought  I  had  better  tell  him 
at  once,  or  he  might  proceed  to  say  I  had  murdered  my  grand- 
mother, which  I  must  have  resented,  you  know. 

"  On  another  occasion,  some  years  later,  when  going  to  Brougham 


420  A    COUNTEY    DINNER. 

Hall,  two  raw  Scotch  girls  got  into  the  coach  in  the  dark,  near 
Carlisle.  '  It  is  very  disagreeable  getting  into  a  coach  in  the 
dark,'  exclaimed  one,  after  arranging  her  bandboxes ;  '  one  can 
not  see  one's  company.'  '  Very  true,  ma'am,  and  you  have  a  great 
loss  in  not  seeing  me,  for  I  am  a  remarkably  handsome  man.' 
'  No,  sir !  are  you  really  ?'  said  both.  '  Yes,  and  in  the  flower  of 
my  youth.'  '  What  a  pity !'  said  they.  We  soon  passed  near  a 
lamp-post :  they  both  darted  forward  to  get  a  look  at  me.  '  La, 
sir,  you  seem  very  stout.'  '  Oh  no,  not  at  all,  ma'am,  it's  only  my 
great  coat.'  '  Where  are  you  going,  sir  ?'  '  To  Brougham  Hall.' 
'  Why,  you  must  be  a  very  remarkable  man,  to  be  going  to 
Brougham  Hall.'  '  I  am  a  very  remarkable  man,  ma'am.'  At 
Penrith  they  got  out,  after  having  talked  incessantly,  and  tried 
every  possible  means  to  discover  who  I  was,  exclaiming  as  they 
went  off  laughing,  '  Well,  it  is  very  provoking  we  can't  see  you. 
but  we'll  find  out  who  you  are  at  the  ball ;  Lord  Brougham  always 
comes  to  the  ball  at  Penrith,  and  we  shall  certainly  be  there,  and 
shall  soon  discover  your  name.' " 


DINNER    IN    THE    COUNTRY. 

Though  it  was  the  general  habit  in  Yorkshire  to  make  visits 
of  two  or  three  days  at  the  houses  in  the  neighborhood,  yet  not 
unfrequently  invitations  to  dinner  only  came,  and  sometimes  to  a 
house  at  a  considerable  distance. 

"  Did  you  ever  dine  out  in  the  country  ?"  said  my  father ;  "  Avhat 
misery  human  beings  inflict  on  each  other  under  the  name  of 

pleasure !     We  went  to  dine  last  Thursday  with  Mr. ,  a 

neighbouring  clergyman,  a  haunch  of  venison  being  the  stimulus  to 
the  invitation.  We  set  out  at  five  o'clock,  drove  in  a  broiling  sun 
on  dusty  roads  three  miles  in  our  best  gowns,  found  Squire  and 
parsons  assembled  in  a  small  hot  room,  the  whole  house  redolent  of 
frying ;  talked,  as  is  our  wont,  of  roads,  weather,  and  turnips ;  that 
done,  began  to  grow  hungry,  then  serious,  then  impatient.  At  last 
a  stripling,  evidently  caught  up  for  the  occasion,  opened  the  door 
and  beckoned  our  host  out  of  the  room.  After  some  moments  of 
awful  suspense,  he  returned  to  us  with  a  face  of  much  distress, 
saying,  '  the  woman  assisting  in  the  kitchen  had  mistaken  the  soup 
for  dirty  water,  and  had  thrown  it  away,  so  we  must  do  without 


DOGS.  421 

it ;'  we  all  agreed  it  was  perhaps  as  well  we  should,  under  the 
eircumstances.  At  last,  to  our  joy,  dinner  was  announeed ;  but 
oh,  ye  gods !  as  we  entered  the  dining-room  what  a  gale  met  our 
nose !  the  venison  was  high,  the  venison  was  uneatable,  and  was 
obliged  to  follow  the  souj)  with  all  speed. 

"  Dinner  proceeded,  but  our  spirits  flagged  under  these  accumu- 
lated misfortunes :  there  was  an  ominous  pause  between  the  first 
and  second  course ;  we  looked  each  other  in  the  face — what  new 
disa.ster  awaited  us  ?  the  pause  became  fearful.  At  last  the  door 
burst  open,  and  the  boy  rushed  in,  calling  out  aloud,  '  Please,  sir, 
has  Betty  any  right  to  leather  I  ?'  "What  human  gravity  could 
stand  this  ?  We  roared  with  laughter ;  all  took  part  against  Betty, 
obtained  the  second  course  with  some  difficulty,  bored  each  other 
the  usual  time,  ordered  our  carriages,  expecting  our  post-bovs  to 
be  drunk,  and  were  grateful  to  Providence  for  not  permitting 
them  to  deposite  us  in  a  wet  ditch.  So  much  for  dinners  in  the 
country !" 


A    DOG    DIFFICULTY. 

During  one  of  his  visits  to  London,  at  a  dinner  at  Spencer 
House,  the  conversation  turned  upon  dogs.  "  Oh,"  said  my 
father,  "  one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  I  have  had  with  my 
parishioners  has  been  on  the  subject  of  dogs."  "  How  so  ?"  said 
Lord  Spencer.  "  Why,  when  I  first  went  down  into  Yorkshire, 
there  had  not  been  a  resident  clergyman  in  my  parish  for  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years.  E^ach  farmer  kept  a  huge  mastiff-dog, 
ranging  at  large,  and  ready  to  make  his  morning  meal  on  clergy 
or  laity,  as  best  suited  his  particular  taste  ;  I  never  could  approach 
a  cottage  in  pursuit  of  my  calling,  but  I  rushed  into  the  jaws  of 
one  of  these  shaggy  monsters.  I  scolded,  preached,  and  prayed, 
without  avail ;  so  I  determined  to  try  what  fear  for  their  pockets 
might  do.  Forthwith  appeax'ed  in  the  county  papers  a  minute 
account  of  a  trial  of  a  farmer,  at  the  Northampton  Sessions,  for 
keeping  dogs  unconfined ;  where  said  farmer  was  not  only  fined 
five  pounds  and  i-eprimanded  by  the  magistrates,  but  sentenced  to 
tliree  naontlis'  imprisonment.  The  effect  was  wonderful,  and  the 
reign  of  Cerberus  ceased  in  the  land."  "  That  accounts,"  said 
Lord  Spencer,  "for  what  has  puzzled  me  and  Althorp  for  many 


422  NIEBUHE. 

yeare  "We  never  failed  to  attend  the  sessions  at  Northampton, 
and  w  e  never  could  find  out  how  we  had  missed  this  remarkable 
do";  case." 


SMALL    MEN. 

An  argument  arose,  in  which  my  father  observed  how  many  of 
the  most  eminent  men  of  the  world  had  been  diminutive  in  person, 
and  after  naming  several  among  the  ancients,  he  added,  ""Why, 

look  there,  at  Jeffrey ;  and  there  is  my  little  friend ,  who  has 

not  body  enough  to  cover  his  mind  decently  with ;  his  intellect  is 
improperly  exposed." 


LOCAL    MORALITIES. 

"When  I  took  my  Yorkshire  servants  into  Somersetshire,  I 
found  that  they  thought  making  a  drink  out  of  apples  was  a  tempt- 
ing of  Providence,  who  had  intended  barley  to  be  the  only  natural 
material  of  intoxication. 


A    NEVT    ZEALAND    ATTORNEY. 


There  is   a  New  Zealand  attorney  arrived  in  London,  with 
6s.  8d.  tattooed  all  over  his  face. 


niebuhr's  discoveries. 
Have  you  heard  of  Niebuhr's  discoveries  ?    All  Roman  history 
reversed ;  Tarquin  turning  out  an  excellent  family  man,  and  Lu- 

cretia  a  very  doubtful  character,  whom  Lady would  not  have 

visited. 


TELEMACHUS. 

.    How  bored  children  are  with  the  wisdom  of  Telemachus  !  they 
can't  think  why  Calypso  is  so  fond  of  him. 


Yes,  he  has  spent  all  his  life  in  letting  down  empty  buckets 
into  empty  wells ;  and  he  is  frittering  away  his  age  in  trying  to 
draw  them  uj)  again. 


THE   BIBLE.  423 

A    REBUKE. 

At  a  lai'ge  dinner  party  the  death  of  IMr.  Dugald  Stewart  was 
announced.  The  news  was  received  with  so  much  levity  by  a 
lady  of  rank,  who  sat  by  Sydney  Smith,  that  he  turned  round  and 
said,  "  Madam,  Avhen  we  are  told  of  the  death  of  so  great  a  man  as 
Mr.  Dugald  Stewart,  it  is  usual,  in  civilized  society,  to  look  grave 
for  at  least  the  space  of  live  seconds." 


BEAUTY    OF    THE    STYLE    OF    THE    BIBLE. 

"  What  is  so  beautiful  as  the  style  of  the  Bible  ?  what  poetry 
in  its  language  and  ideas  !"  and  taking  it  down  from  the  bookcase 
behind  him,  he  read,  with  his  beautiful  voice,  and  in  his  most  im- 
pressive manner,  several  of  his  favourite  passages  ;  among  others 
I  remember — "Thou  shalt  rise  up  before  the  hoary  head,  and 
honour  the  face  of  an  old  man ;"  and  part  of  that  most  beautiful  of 
Psalms,  the  139th:  "0  Lord,  thou  hast  searched  me,  and  known 
me.  Thou  knowest  my  downsitting  and  mine  uprising;  thou  uii- 
derstandest  my  thoughts  afar  off.  Thou  compassest  my  patli  and 
my  lying  down,  and  art  acquainted  with  all  my  ways.  .  .  .  Whither 
shall  I  go  from  thy  spirit,  or  Avhither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence  ? 
If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there ;  if  I  make  my  bed  in 
hell,  behold  thou  art  there.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 
and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea ;  even  there  shall  thy 
hand  lead  me,  and  thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me.  If  I  say.  Surely 
the  darkness  shall  cover  me,  even  the  night  shall  be  light  about 
me  ;  yea,  the  darkness  hideth  not  from  thee  ;  but  the  night  shineth 
as  the  day ;  the  darkness  and  the  light  are  both  alike  to  thee" — 
putting  the  Bible  again  on  the  shelf. 


FIREPLACES. 

Never  neglect  your  fireplaces ;  I  have  paid  great  attention  to 
mine,  and  could  burn  you  all  out  in  a  moment.  Much  of  the 
cheerfulness  of  life  depends  upon  it.  Who  could  be  miserable  with 
that  fire  ?  What  makes  a  fire  so  pleasant  is,  I  think,  that  it  is  a 
live  thing  in  a  dead  room. 


anti-melancholy. 
Never  give  way  to  melancholy ;  resist  it  steadily,  for  the  habit 
will  encroach.    I  once  gave  a  lady  two-and  twenty  receipts  against 


424  WOMEN DRESS. 

melancholy :  one  was  a  bright  fire ;  another,  to  remember  all  the 
pleasant  things  said  to  and  of  her ;  another,  to  keep  a  box  of  sugar- 
plums on  the  chimney-piece,  and  a  kettle  simmering  on  the  hob. 


BLUE-STOCKINGS. 

Keep  as  much  as  possible  on  the  grand  and  common  road  of 
life ;  patent  educations  or  habits  seldom  succeed.  Depend  upon 
it,  men  set  more  value  on  the  cultivated  minds  than  on  the  ac- 
complishments of  women,  which  they  are  rarely  able  to  appreciate. 
It  is  a  common  error,  but  it  is  an  error,  that  literature  unfits  women 
for  the  every-day  business  of  life.  It  is  not  so  with  men  ;  you  see 
those  of  the  most  cultivated  minds  constantly  devoting  their  time 
and  attention  to  the  most  homely  objects.  Literature  gives  women 
a  real  and  proper  weight  in  society,  but  then  they  must  use  it  with 
discretion ;  if  the  stocking  is  hlue,  the  petticoat  must  be  long,  as 
my  friend  Jeffrey  says ;  the  want  of  this  has  furnished  food  for 
ridicule  in  all  ajies. 


DRESS    AND    BEAUTY. 

Never  teach  false  morality.  How  exquisitely  absurd  to  tell 
girls  that  beauty  is  of  no  value,  dress  of  no  use  !  Beauty  is  of  value  ; 
her  whole  prospects  and  happiness  in  life  may  often  depend  upon 
a  new  gown  or  a  becoming  bonnet,  and  if  she  has  five  grains  of  com- 
mon sense  she  will  find  tliis  out.  The  great  thing  is  to  teach  her 
their  just  value,  and  that  there  must  be  something  better  under  the 
bonnet  than  a  pretty  face  for  real  happiness.  But  never  sacrifice 
truth. 


A    UTILITARIAN. 


Some  one,  speaking  of  the  utility  of  a  measure,  and  quoting 
's  opinion  :  "  Yes,  he  is  of  the  Utilitarian  school.     That  man 


is  so  hard  you  might  drive  a  broad-wheeled  wagon  over  him,  and 
it  would  produce  no  impression ;  if  you  were  to  bore  holes  in  him 
with  a  gimlet,  I  am  convinced  saw-dust  would  come  out  of  him. 
That  school  treat  mankind  as  if  they  were  mere  machines ;  the 
feelings  or  afiections  never  enter  into  their  calculations.  If  every- 
thing is  to  be  sacrificed  to  utility,  why  do  you  bury  your  grand- 


PICTURES.  425 

mother  at  all  ?  Avliy  don't  you  cut  her  into  small  pieces  at  once, 
and  make  portable  soup  of  her  ?" 


THE    HOUSE    OF    COMMONS. 

Yes,  it  requires  a  long  apprenticeship  to  speak  well  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  is  the  most  formidable  ordeal  in  the 
world.  Few  men  have  succeeded  who  entered  it  late  in  life  ;  Jef- 
frey is  perhaps  the  best  exception.  Bobus  used  to  say  that  there 
was  more  sense  and  good  taste  in  the  whole  House,  than  in  any 
one  individual  of  which  it  was  composed. 


TWENTY-FOUR    HOURS    AFTER. 

"We  are  told,  "  Let  not  the  sun  go  down  on  your  wi'ath."  This, 
of  course,  is  best ;  but,  as  it  generally  does,  I  would  add,  Never 
act  or  write  till  it  has  done  so.  This  rule  has  saved  me  from  many 
an  act  of  folly.  It  is  wonderful  what  a  different  view  we  take  of 
the  same  event  foui'-and-twenty  hours  after  it  has  happened. 


LIGHT    AND    SHADE. 

I  LIKE  pictures,  without  knowing  anything  about  them ;  I  at  I 
hate  coxcombry  in  the  fine  arts,  as  well  as  in  anything  else.  I  got 
into  dreadful  disgrace  with  Sir  George  Beaumont  once,  who,  stand- 
ing before  a  picture  at  Bowood,  exclaimed,  tui-ning  to  me,  "  immense 
breadth  of  light  and  shade  !"  I  innocently  said,  "  Yes  ;  about  an 
inch  and  a  half."     He  gave  me  a  look  that  ought  to  have  killed 


A    ONE-BOOK    MAN. 

Yes,  it  was  a  mistake  to  write  any  more.  He  was  a  one-book 
man.    Some  men  have  only  one  book  in  them ;  others,  a  library. 

*  Smith  fiirnii=hsci  his  house  once  with  a  set  of  daubs,  and  invented  names 
of  great  mn,t.iers  for  them  : — "a  beautiful  landscape  by  Nicholas  de  Falda,  a 
pupil  of  Vaklepffio,  the  only  paintinc;  by  that  eminent  artist."  He  consulted 
two  Royal  Academicians  as  to  his  purchases,  and  when  he  had  set  tiiem  con- 
Fideriiig  what  opportunities  were  likely  to  occur,  added,  by  way  of  aftcr- 
tftought ;  ''Oh,  I  ought  to  have  told  you  that  my  outside  price  for  a  picture 
ib  thirty-five  shillings." 


426  HAND-SHAKING. 

COMrOSlTION. 
In  composing,  as  a  general  rule,  run  your  pen  througli  every 
other  word  you  ha^  e  written ;  you  Lave  no  idea  what  vigour  it 
will  give  your  style. 


MATHEMATICS. 

The  most  promising  sign  in  a  boy  is,  I  should  say,  mathe- 
matics. 


FACTS    AND    FIGURES. 


Oh,  don't  tell  me  of  facts — I  never  believe  facts:  you  know 
Canning  said  nothing  was  so  fallacious  as  facts,  except  figures. 


HAND-SHAKING. 

On  meeting  a  young  lady  who  had  just  entered  the  garden,  and 
shaking  hands  with  her:  'I  must,'  he  said,  'give  you  a  lesson  in 
shaking  hands,  I  see.  There  is  nothing  more  characteristic  than 
shakes  of  the  hand.  I  have  classified  them.  Lister,  when  he 
was  here,  illustrated  some  of  them.  Ask  Mrs.  Sydney  to  show 
you  his  sketches  of  them  when  you  go  in.  There  is  the  high 
official — the  body  erect,  and  a  rapid,  short  shake,  near  tlie  chin. 
There  is  the  mortmain  —  the  flat  hand  introduced  into  your  palm, 
and  hardly  conscious  of  its  contiguity.  The  digital — one  finger 
held  out,  much  used  by  the  high  clergy.  There  is  the  shakus 
rusticus,  where  your  hand  is  seized  in  an  iron  grasp,  betokening 
rude  health,  warm  heart,  and  distance  from  the  Metropolis ;  but 
producing  a  strong  sense  of  relief  on  your  part  when  you  find 
your  hand  released  and  your  fingers  unbroken.  The  next  to  this 
is  the  retentive  shake  —  one  which,  beginning  with  vigour,  pauses  as 
it  were  to  take  breath,  but  without  relinquishing  its  prey,  and  be- 
fore you  are  aware  begins  again,  till  you  feel  anxious  as  to  the 
result,  and  have  no  shake  left  in  you.  There  are  other  vai'ieties, 
but  this  is  enough  for  one  lesson. 


A   JOKE    IN    THE    COUNTRY. 


A  JOKE  goes  a  great  way  in  the  country.     I  have  known  one 
last  pretty  well  for  seven  years.     I  remember  making  a  joke  aftar 


SALAD.  427 

a  meeting  of  the  clergy,  in  Yorkshire,  where  there  was  a  Hqx. 
Mr.  Buckle,  who  never  spoke  when  I  gave  his  health ;  saying, 
that  he  was  a  buckle  without  a  tongue.  Most  persons  within 
hearing  laughed,  but  my  next  neighbour  sat  unmoved  and  sunk  in 
thought.  At  last,  a  quarter  of  an  hour  after  we  had  all  done,  he 
suddenly  nudged  me,  exclaiming,  "  I  see  now  what  you  meant, 
Mr.  Smith  ;  you  meant  a  joke.'  "  Yes,"  I  said,  "  sir ;  I  believe  1 
did."  Upon  which  he  began  laughing  so  heartily,  that  I  thought 
he  would  choke,  and  was  obliged  to  pat  him  on  the  back. 


SALAD    RECIPE. 

That  pudding !  yes,  that  was  the  pudding  Lady  Holland  asked 
the  recipe  for  when  she  came  to  see  us.  I  shook  my  head  and 
said  it  could  not  be  done,  even  for  her  ladyship.  She  became 
more  urgent ;  Mrs.  Sydney  was  soft-hearted,  and  gave  it.  The 
glory  of  it  almost  turned  my  cook's  head  ;  she  has  never  been  the 
same  since.  But  our  forte  in  the  culinary  line  is  our  salads ;  I 
pique  myself  on  our  salads.  Saba  always  dresses  them  after  my 
recipe.  I  have  put  it  into  verse.  Taste  it,  and  if  you  like  it, 
I  will  give  it  you.     I  was  not  aware  how  much  it  had  contributed 

to  my  reputation,  till  I  met  Lady at  Bowood,  who  begged 

to  be  introduced  to  me,  saying,  she  had  so  long  wished  to  know 
me.  I  was  of  course  highly  flattered,  till  she  added,  '  For,  Mr. 
Smith,  I  have  heard  so  much  of  your  recipe  for  salads,  that  I  was 
most  anxious  to  obtain  it  from  you.'  Such  and  so  vai-ious  are  the 
sources  of  fame ! 

"  To  make  this  condiment,  your  poet  bcj^s 

Tlie  pounded  yellow  of  two  hard-boiled  ejjgs; 

Two  boiled  potatoes,  passed  through  kitchen  sieve^ 

Smoothness  and  softness  to  the  salad  give. 

Let  onion  atoms  lurk  witliin  the  bowl. 

And,  half-suspected,  animate  the  whole. 

Of  mordant  mustard  add  a  single  spoon, 

Distrust  the  condiment  that  bites  so  soon ; 

But  deem  it  not,  thou  man  of  herbs,  a  fault, 

To  add  a  double  quantity  of  salt. 

Four  times  the  spoon  with  oil  from  Lucca  brown, 

And  twice  with  vinegar  procured  from  town  ; 

And,  lastly,  o'er  the  flavored  compound  toss 

A  magic  soup^on  of  anchovy  sauce. 


428  WINTER   SALAD. 

Oh,  green  and  glorious  !     Oh,  herbaceous  treat ! 
'Twould  tempt  the  dj^ing  anchorite  to  eat : 
Back  to  tlic  world  iie'd  turn  his  fleeting  soul, 
And  plunge  his  fingers  in  the  salad  bowl ! 
Serenely  full,  the  epicure  would  say, 
"  Fate  cannot  harm  me,  I  have  dined  to-day." 

[The  above  is  the  famous  recipe  as  given  by  Lady  Holland  in 
her  Memoir.  We  have  before  us  printed  on  the  first  page  of  a 
letter-sheet  (on  the  back  of  which  is  the  second  note  to  Captain 
Morgan  on  the  American  Debts  previously  given,  p.  72),  the  fol- 
lowing with  some  variations,  and  as  the  date  of  the  letter  is  1844 
it  has  good  pretensions  to  the  latest  edition.  The  affectionate 
friend  solicitously  adds  with  his  own  hand :  "  Let  me  beg  you  not 
to  alter  the  proportions  in  the  salad."  Such  are  the  well-known 
anxieties  of  salad-makers.] 

A  Recipe  for  Salad. 

LAST    EDITION. 

Two  large  potatoes,  passed  through  kitchen  sieve, 

Unwonted  softness  to  the  salad  give : 

Of  mordant  mustard,  add  a  single  spoon, 

Distrust  the  condiment  which  bites  so  soon ; 

But  deem  it  not,  thou  man  of  herbs,  a  fault. 

To  add  a  double  quantity  of  salt : 

Three  times  the  spoon  with  oil  of  Lucca  crown. 

And  once  with  vinegar,  procured  from  town ; 

True  flavour  needs  it,  and  your  poet  begs 

The  pounded  yellow  of  two  well-boiled  eggs ; 

Let  onion  atoms  lurk  within  the  bowl. 

And  scarce  suspected,  animate  the  whole ; 

And  lastly,  on  the  flavoured  compound  toss, 

A  magic  teaspoon  of  anchovy  sauce  : 

Then  though  green  turtle  fixil,  though  venison's  tough. 

And  ham  and  turkey  are  not  boiled  enough. 

Serenely  full,  the  epicure  may  say  — 

"  Fate  cannot  harm  me,  —  I  have  dined  to-day." 

To  this  is  added  in  print: 

A    Winter  Salad. 

Two  well  boiled  potatoes,  passed  through  a  sieve :  a  teaspoon- 
ful  of  mustard ;  two  teaspoonfuls  of  salt ;  one  of  essence  of  an- 
chovy ;  about  a  quarter  of  a  teaspoonful  of  very  finely-chopped 
onions  well  bruised  into  the  mixture,  three  tablespoonfuls  of  oil : 


LADY   CORK.  420 

one  of  vinegar ;  the  yolk  of  two  egg?,  liard  boiled.     Stir  np  the 
salad  immediately  before  dinner,  and  stir  it  up  thoroughly. 

N.  B.  As  this  salad  is  the  result  of  great  experience  and  re- 
flection, it  is  hoped  young  salad-makers  will  not  attempt  to  make 
any  improvements  upon  it. 


PARODY    ON    POPE. 

PIave  you  heard  my  parody  on  Pope  ? 

Why  has  not  man  a  collar  and  a  log  7 
For  this  plain  reason  —  man  is  not  a  dog. 
"Why  is  not  man  served  up  ^vith  sauce  in  dish  ? 
For  this  plain  reason  —  man  is  not  a  fish. 


TRANSIT    OF    A    SOVEREIGN. 


Bt-the-by,  it  happened  to  be  a  charity  sennon,  and  I  considered 
it  a  wonderful  proof  of  my  eloquence,  that  it  actually  moved  old 
Lady  Cork  to  borrow  a  sovereign  from  Dudley,  and  that  he  actu- 
ally gave  it  her,  though  knowing  he  must  take  a  long  farewell  of 

it.     I  was  told  afterward  by  Lady  S that  she  rejoiced  to  see 

it  had  brought "'  iron  tears  down  Pluto's  cheek"  (meaning  by  that 
her  husband),  certainly  little  given  to  the  melting  mood  in  any 


sense. 


VENUS    MILLINARIA. 

I  ONCE  saw  a  dressed  statue  of  Venus  in  a  serious  house  —  the 
Venus  MiUinaria. 

*This  story  is  told  somewhat  differently  in  Dyce's  Recollections  of  the 
Table-Talk  of  Rogers  :  "  Lady  Cork  was  once  so  moved  by  a  charity  sermon, 
that  she  begged  me  [Smith]  to  lend  her  a  guinea  for  her  contribution.  I  did 
so  —  she  never  repaid  me  and  spent  it  on  herself."  Jekyll,  the  great  wit  of 
the  lawyers,  said  at  one  of  Lady  Cork's  parties  where  she  wore  an  enormous 
plume,  "  she  was  exactly  a  shuttlecock  —  all  cork  and  feathers." 

Lady  Cork  was  the  veteran  of  London  society.  Her  parties  to  literary  ce- 
lebrities were  famous  from  the  days  of  Dr.  Johnson  who  visited  her  gather- 
ings. She  was  the  Miss  Monkton  of  Boswell's  Johnson  ;  daughter  of  Vis- 
count Gnlway;  married  in  178G  to  the  Earl  of  Cork.  She  held  on  among 
the  London  literati  bravely  to  the  last,  dying  in  1840,  at  the  age  of  ninety 
four. 


430  DOGS  —  MANNERS. 

THE    VANILLE    OF    SOCIETY. 

Ah,  you  flavour  everything ;  you  are  the  vanille  of  society. 


SEWING    FOR    MEN. 


I  WISH  I  could  sew.     I  believe  one  reason  Avhy  women  are  so 
much  more  cheerful,  generally,  than  men,  is  because  they  can  work, 

and  vary  more  their  employments.     Lady used  to  teach  her 

sons  carpet-work.     All  men  ought  to  learn  to  sew. 


DOGS. 


No,  I  don't  like  dogs ;  I  always  expect  them  to  go  mad.  A 
iady  asked  me  once  for  a  motto  for  her  dog  Spot.  I  proposed, 
"  Out,  damned  Spot !"  but  she  did  not  think  it  sentimental  enough. 
You  remember  the  story  of  the  French  marquise,  who,  when  her 
pel  lap-dog  bit  a  piece  out  of  her  footman's  leg,  exclaimed,  "  Ah, 
poor  little  beast !    I  hope  it  won't  make  him  sick."     I  called  one 

day  on  Mrs. ,  and  her  lap-dog  flew  at  my  leg  and  bit  it.    After 

pitying  her  dog,  like  the  French  marquise,  she  did  all  she  could  to 
comfoi't  me,  by  assuring  me  the  dog  was  a  Dissenter,  and  hated 
the  Church,  and  was  brought  up  in  a  Tory  family.  But  whether 
the  bite  came  from  madness  or  Dissent,  I  knew  myself  too  well  to 
neglect  it ;  and  went  on  the  instant  to  a  surgeon  and  had  it  cut  out, 
making  a  mem.  on  the  way  to  enter  that  house  no  more. 


MANNERS. 


Manners  are  often  too  much  neglected :  they  are  most  impor- 
tant to  men,  no  less  than  to  women.  I  believe  the  English  are 
the  most  disagreeable  people  under  the  sun ;  not  so  much  because 
Mr.  John  Bull  disdains  to  talk,  as  that  the  respected  individual 
has  nothing  to  say,  and  because  he  totally  neglects  manners.  Look 
at  a  French  carter ;  he  takes  off"  his  hat  to  his  neighbour  carter, 
and  inquires  after  "  La  sante  de  madame,"  with  a  bow  that  would 
not  have  disgraced  Sir  Charles  Grandison ;  and  I  have  often  seen 
a  French  soubrette  with  a  far  better  manner  than  an  English 
duchess.  Life  is  too  short  to  get  over  a  bad  manner ;  besides, 
manners  are  the  shadows  of  virtue. 


UP-TAKERS  —  CLEARERS.  431 

FURNITURE    OF    A    COUNTUY-IIOUSE. 

I  THINK  no  house  is  well  fitted  up  in  the  country  without  people 
of  all  ages.  There  sliould  be  an  old  man  or  woman  to  pet ;  a  par- 
rot, a  child,  a  monkey ;  something,  as  the  French  say,  to  love  and 
to  despise.  I  have  just  bought  a  parrot,  to  keep  my  servants  in 
good-humour. 


TOWN    AND    COUNTRY. 


The  charm  of  London  is  that  you  are  never  glad  or  sorry  for 
ten  minutes  together:  in  the  country  you  are  the  one  and  the 
other  for  weeks. 


TEA    AND    COFFEE. 

At  the  tea-table  :  "  Thank  God  for  tea  !  What  would  the  world 
do  without  tea?  how  did  it  exist?  I  am  glad  I  was  not  born  be- 
fore tea.  I  can  drink  any  quantity  when  I  have  not  tasted  wine , 
otherwise  I  am,  haunted  by  blue-devils  by  day,  and  dragons  by 
night.  If  you  want  to  improve  your  understanding,  drink  coifee. 
Sir  James  Mackintosh  used  to  say,  he  believed  the  difference 
between  one  man  and  another  was  produced  by  the  quantity  of 
coffee  he  drank. 


CLASSES    OF    SOCIETY. 

I  HAVE  divided  mankind  into  classes.  There  is  the  Noodle  — 
very  numerous,  but  well  known.  The  Affliction-woman  —  a  valu- 
able member  of  society,  generally  an  ancient  spinster,  or  distant 
relation  of  the  family,  in  small  circumstances :  the  moment  she 
hears  of  any  accident  or  distress  in  the  family,  she  sets  off,  packs 
up  her  little  bag,  and  is  immediately  established  there,  to  comfort, 
flatter,  fetch,  and  carry.  The  Up-takers  —  a  class  of  people  who 
only  see  through  their  fingers'  ends,  and  go  through  a  room  taking 
jp  and  touching  everything,  however  visible  and  however  tender. 
The  Glearers — Avho  begin  at  the  dish  before  them,  and  go  on 
picking  or  tasting  till  it  is  cleared,  however  large  the  company, 
small  the  supply,  and  rare  the  contents.     The  Sheep-walkers  — 


432  SHAM    SYDNEY  SMITHS. 

those  who  never  deviate  from  the  beaten  track,  -vv ho  think  as  their 
fathers  have  thought  since  the  flood,  who  start  from  a  new  idea  as 
they  would  from  guilt.  The  Lemon-squeezers  of  society — people 
who  act  on  you  as  a  wet  blanket,  who  see  a  cloud  in  the  sunshine, 
[he  nails  of  the  cofRn  in  the  ribands  of  the  bride,  predictors  of  evil, 
extinguishers  of  hope ;  who,  where  there  are  two  sides,  see  only 
the  worst — people  whose  very  look  curdles  the  milk,  and  sets 
your  teeth  on  edge.  The  Let-weli-aloners  —  cousins-german  to 
the  Noodle,  yet  a  variety ;  people  who  have  begun  to  think  and  to 
act,  but  are  timid,  and  afraid  to  try  their  wings,  and  tremble  at  the 
sound  of  their  own  footsteps  as  they  advance,  and  think  it  safer  to 
stand  still.  Then  the  Washerwomen  —  very  numerous,  who  ex- 
claim, "  Well !  as  sure  as  ever  I  put  on  my  best  bonnet,  it  is  cer- 
tain to  rain,"  etc.     There  are  many  more,  but  I  forget  them. 

Oh,  yes !  there  is  another  class,  as  you  say ;  people  who  are 
always  treading  on  your  gouty  foot,  or  talking  in  your  deaf  ear,  or 
asking  you  to  give  them  sometliing  with  your  lame  hand,  stirring 
up  your  weak  point,  rubbing  your  sore,  etc. 


MRS.    SIDDONS. 

I  NEVER  go  to  tragedies,  my  heart  is  too  soft.  There  is  too 
much  real  misery  in  life.  But  what  a  face  she  had  !  The  gods 
do  not  bestow  such  a  face  as  Mrs.  Siddons's  on  the  stage  more 
than  once  in  a  century.  I  knew  her  very  well,  and  she  had  the 
good  taste  to  laugh  heartily  at  my  jokes  ;  she  was  an  excellent  per- 
son, but  she  was  not  remarkable  out  of  her  profession,  and  never 
got  out  of  tragedy  even  in  common  life.  She  used  to  stab  the  po- 
tatoes ;  and  said,  "  Boy,  give  me  a  knife  !"  as  she  would  have  said, 
"  Give  me  the  dagger !" 


SHAM    SYDNEY    SMITHS. 

I  HAVE  heard  that  one  of  the  American  ministers  in  this  country 
was  so  oppressed  by  the  numbers  of  his  countrym^i  applying  for 
introductions,  that  he  was  obliged  at  last  to  set  up  sham  Sydney 
Smiths  and  false  Macaulays.  But  they  can't  have  been  good  coun- 
terfeits ;  for  a  most  respectable  American,  on  his  return  home,  was 
beard  describing  Sydney  Smith  as  a  thin,  grave,  dull  old  fellow  j 


FRIENDSHIP.  433 

nnd  as  to  Muoaiilay,"  !?aid  he,  "  I  never  met  a  more  silent  man  in 
my  life."* 


CANVAS-BACK    DUCKS. 

I  FULLY  intended  going  to  America ;  but  my  parishioners  held 
a  meeting,  and  came  to  a  resolution  that  tliey  could  not  trust  me 
with  the  canvas-back  ducks ;  and  I  felt  they  were  right,  so  gave 
up  the  project. 


FRIENDSHIP. 

True,  it  is  most  painful  not  to  meet  the  kindness  and  affection 
you  feel  you  have  deserved,  and  have  a  right  to  expect  from 
others ;  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  complain  of  it,  for  it  is  of  no  use : 
you  can  not  extort  friendship  with  a  cocked  pistol. 

*  In  the  summer  of  1844,  iu  the  list  of  passenp;ers,  on  the  arrival  of  the 
Great  Western  at  New  York,  was  advertised  Sydney  Smith.  It  created  some 
paragraphing  in  the  papers,  and  quite  a  flutter  among  the  genuine  Sydney's 
church  friends.  In  a  letter  to  the  Countess  Grey,  Smith  alludes  to  the  af- 
fair :  "  There  arrived,  the  other  day,  at  New  York,  a  Sydney  Smith.  A 
meeting  was  called,  and  it  was  proposed  to  tar-and-feather  him ;  but  tho 
amendment  was  carried,  that  he  sliould  be  invited  to  a  public  dinner.  He 
turned  out  to  be  a  journeyman  cooper !  My  informant  encloses  for  me  an  in- 
vitation from  the  Bishop  of  the  Diocese  to  come  and  see  him,  and  a  proposi- 
tion that  we  should  travel  together  to  the  Falls  of  Niagara." 

The  author  of  tlie  article  m  the  Edinburgh  Review,  on  Smith  (July,  1S55), 
caps  the  "  sham  Sydney  Smiths  and  false  Macaulays"  with  the  following : — 
"  Sophie  Arnault  actually  played  oft'  a  similar  trick  on  a  party  of  Parisian  fine 
ladies  and  gentlemen  who  had  expressed  a  wish  to  meet  Rousseau.  Sho 
dressed  up  a  theatrical  tailor  who  bore  some  likeness  to  the  author  of  '  Emile,' 
and  placed  him  next  to  herself  at  dinner,  with  instructions  not  to  open  his 
mouth  except  to  eat  and  drink.  Unluckily  ha  opened  it  too  often  for  the  ad- 
mission of  champagne,  and  began  talking  in  a  style  befitting  the  coulisses; 
but  this  only  added  to  the  delusion,  and  the  next  day  the  noble  faubourg  rang 
with  the  praises  of  the  easy  sparkling  pleasantry  of  tho  philosopher.  Accord- 
ing to  another  well-authenticated  anecdote,  there  was  a  crazy  fellow  at  Edin- 
burgh, who  called  himself  Doctor,  fancied  that  he  had  once  been  on  the  point 
of  obtaining  the  chair  of  Moral  Philosophy,  and  professed  the  most  extrava- 
gant admiration  for  a  celebrated  poet.  Some  wag  suggested  that  lie  should 
pay  a  visit  to  his  idol.  He  did  so,  and  stayed  two  days,  indulging  his  mono- 
mania, but  simultaneously  gratifying  his  host's  prodigious  aj)petite  for  adula- 
Lion  ;  and  the  poet  uniformly  spoke  of  him  as  cue  of  the  most  intelligent  and 
well-inf&rnied  Scotchmen  he  had  ever  known.  When  this  story  was  told  to 
Sydney  Smith,  he  offered  the  narrator  five  shillings  for  the  exclusive  r'ij;ht 
to  it  for  a  week.     The  bargain  was  struck,  and  the  money  paid  down." 

1& 


434  PEAISE. 

THREE    SEXES. 

Don't  you  know,  as  the  French  say,  there  are  three  sexes  — 
men,  women,  and  clergymen. 


SOCINIAN. 

Some  one  naming as  not  very  orthodox,  "Accuse  a  man 

of  being  a  Socinian,  and  it  is  all  over  with  him ;  for  the  country 
gentlemen  all  think  it  has  something  to  do  with  poaching." 


dome    of    ST.    PAUL  S. 

"We  were  all  assembled  to  look  at  a  turtle  that  had  been  sent  to 
the  house  of  a  friend,  when  a  child  of  the  party  stooped  down  and 
began  eagerly  stroking  the  shell  of  the  turtle.     "  Why  are  you 

doing  that,  B ?"  said  my  father.     "Oh,  to  please  the  turtle." 

"Why,  child,  you  might  as  well  stroke  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's,  to 
please  the  Dean  and  Chapter." 


PRAISE. 


Some  one  observing  the  wonderful  improvement  in since 

his  success ;  "  Ah !"  he  said,  "  praise  is  the  best  diet  for  us,  after 
all." 


SAMARITANS. 


Yes  !  you  find  people  ready  enough  to  do  the  Samaritan,  with- 
out the  oil  and  twopence. 


HAPPINESS. 


The  haunts  of  Happiness  are  varied,  and  rather  unaccountable , 
but  I  have  more  often  seen  her  among  little  children,  home  fire 
Bi^es,  and  country-houses,  than  anywhere  else ;  at  least  I  think  so 


DANIEL    WEBSTER. 

Daniel  Webster  struck  me  much   like   a  steam-engine  ic 
txowsers. 


// 


ROGERS.  435 

PltESCOTT    THE    HISTORIAN. 

"When  Prescott   comes   to  England,  a  Caspian  Sea   of  soup 
awaits  him. 


SAMUEL    ROGERS. 

In  1823,  having  received  a  presentation  to  the  Charterhouse 
from  the  Arclibishop  of  York,  for  his  second  son,  Wyndham,  Sydney 
Smith  took  liim  there  in  the  spring.  While  he  was  in  town,  Mr. 
Rogers  says,  "  I  had  been  ill  some  weeks,  confined  to  my  bed. 
Sydney  Smith  heard  of  it,  found  me  out,  sat  by  my  bed,  cheered 
me,  talked  to  mo,  made  me  laugh  more  than  I  ever  thought  to 
have  laughed  again.  The  next  day  a  bulletin  was  brought  to  my 
bedside,  giving  the  physician's  report  of  my  case ;  the  following 
day  the  report  was  much  worse  ;  the  next  day  declaring  there  was 
no  hope,  and  England  would  have  to  mourn  over  the  loss  of  her 
sweetest  poet ;  then  I  died  amidst  weeping  friends  ;  then  came  my 
funeral ;  and  lastly,  a  sketch  of  my  character,  all  written  by  that 
pen  which  had  the  power  of  turning  everything  into  sunshine  and 
joy.     Sydney  never  forgot  his  friends." 

Addressing  Eogers :  "My  dear  R.,  if  we  were  both  in  America, 
we  should  be  tarred  and  feathered ;  and,  lovely  as  we  are  by  na- 
ture, I  should  be  an  ostrich  and  you  an  emu." 

"  How  is  Rogers  ?"  "  He  is  not  very  well."  "  Why,  what  is 
the  matter  ?"  "  Oh,  don't  you  know  he  has  produced  a  couplet  ? 
When  our  friend  is  delivered  of  a  couplet,  with  infinite  labour  and 
pain,  he  takes  to  his  bed,  has  straw  laid  down,  the  knocker  tied 
up,  expects  his  friends  to  call  and  make  inquiries,  and  the  answer 
at  the  door  invariably  is,  '  Mr.  Rogers  and  his  little  couplet  are  as 
well  as  can  be  expected.'  When  he  produces  an  Alexandrine  ho 
keeps  his  bed  a  day  longer." 

Sydney  Smith  mentioned  having  once  half-oifended  Sam. 
Rogers,  by  recommending  him,  when  he  sat  for  his  picture,  to  be 
drawn  saying  his  prayers,  Avith  his  face  in  his  hat.* 

*  Diary  of  the  Rev.  Ricliard  Harris  Barham,  Oct.  2,  1831 — in  Memoir. 
The  tele  inorte  anecdotes  of  Rogers  are  numerous.      That  pleasant  book 


436  TALLEYRAND. 

TALLEYKAXD, 

One  evening,  at  his  house  (in  London  in  later  hfe),  a  few  friends 
had  come  in  to  tea ;  among  others,  Lord  Jeffrey,  Dr.  Holland,  and 
his  sister.  Some  one  spoke  of  Talleyrand.  "  Oli,"  said  Sydney, 
"  Lady  Holland  labored  incessantly  to  convince  me  that  Talleyrand 
was  agreeable,  and  was  very  angry  because  his  arrival  was  usually 
a  signal  for  my  departure  ;  but,  in  the  first  place,  he  never  spoke 
at  all  till  he  had  not  only  devoured  but  digested  his  dinner,  and  as 
this  was  a  slow  process  with  him,  it  did  not  occur  till  everybody 
else  was  asleep,  or  ought  to  have  been  so;  and  when  he  did  speak 
he  was  so  inarticulate  I  never  could  understand  a  word  he  said." 
"  It  was  otherwise  with  me,"  said  Dr.  Holland ;  "  I  never  found 
much  difficulty  in  following  him."  "  Did  not  you  ?  why  it  was  an 
abuse  of  terms  to  call  it  talking  at  all ;  for  he  had  not  teeth,  and, 
1  believe,  no  roof  to  his  mouth  —  no  uvula  —  no  larynx — no 
trachea — no  epiglottis  —  no  anything.  It  was  not  talking,  it  was 
gargling ;  and  that,  by-the-by,  now  I  think  of  it,  must  be  the  very 
reason  why  Holland  understood  him  so  much  better  than  I  did," 
turning  suddenly  round  on  him  with  his  merry  laugh. 

"  Yet  nobody's  wit  was  of  so  high  an  order  as  Talleyrand's 
■when  it  did  come,  or  has  so  well  stood  the  test  of  time.     You  re- 

The  Clubs  of  London,  tells  us  "it  was  the  fashion  to  liken  the  pale  visage  of 
the  poet  to  all  sorts  of  funereal  things — Tristissima  mortis  imar/o  I  But  Ward's 
(Lord  Dudley)  were  the  most  felicitous  resemblances.  Rogers  had  been  at 
Spa,  and  was  telling  Ward  that  the  place  was  so  full,  that  lie  could  not  so 
much  as  find  a  bed  to  lie  in,  and  that  he  was  obliged,  on  that  account,  to 
leave  it.  '  Dear  me,'  replied  Ward,  '  was  there  no  room  in  the  church- 
yard  V  At  another  time,  Murray  was  showing  him  a  portrait  of  Rogers,  ob- 
serving that  '  it  was  done  to  the  life.'  '  To  the  death,  you  mean,'  replied 
Ward."  Among  other  sallies  of  the  same  kind,  was  his  asking  Rogers 
— "  Why  don't  you  keep  j'our  hearse,  Rogers  1  you  can  well  afford  it." 
Fraser's  Magazine,  in  1830,  had  a  severe  caricature — "There  is  Sam.  Ro- 
gers, a  mortal  likeness — painted  to  the  very  death."  Byron's  terrible  lines 
are  well  known : — 

Nose  and  chin  would  shame  a  knocker ; 
Wrinkles  that  would  puzzle  Cocker. 
***** 

Is't  a  corpse  stuck  up  for  show, 
Galvanized  at  times  to  go  ? 

rhe  corpse,  however,  long  survived  all  the  satirists,  Ward,  B}Ton,  Maginn 


TALLEYIIAND    ANECDOTES.  -ISI 

member  when  liis  frienl  Montrond*  was  taken  ill,  anil  exclaimed, 
'  Mon  ami,  je  sens  les  toin-mens  de  I'enfer.'  '  Quoi !  deja  ?'  was 
liis  reply.  And  when  he  sat  at  dinner  between  INIadame  de  Stat! 
and  Madame  Recamier,  the  celebrated  beauty,  Madame  de  Stael, 
whose  beauties  were  certainly  not  those  of  the  person,  jealous  of 
his  attentions  to  her  rival,  insisted  upon  knowing  which  he  would 
save  if  they  were  both  drowning.  After  seeking  in  vain  to  evade 
her,  he  at  last  turned  towai'd  her  and  said,  with  his  usual  shrug, 

"  Ah,  madame,  vous  savez  nager"     And  when exclaimed, 

"  Me  voila  entre  I'esprit  et  la  beaute,"  he  answered,  "  Oui,  et  sans 

posseder  ni  I'un  ni  I'autre."    And  of  IMadame ,  "  Oui,  elle  est 

belle,  tres-belle ;  mais  pour  la  toilette,  cela  commence  trop  tard,  et 

finit  trop  t6t."     Of  Loi'd he   said,   "  C'est  la  bienveillance 

meme,  mais  la  bienveillance  la  plus  perturbative  que  j'ai  jamais 
connu."  To  a  friend  of  mine  he  said  on  one  occasion,  "  Milady, 
voulez-vous  me  preter  ce  Uvre  ?"  "  Oui,  mais  vous  me  le  rendrez  ?" 
"Oui."  "Parole  d'honneur?"  "Oui."  "Vous  en  etes  surf 
"  Oui,  oui,  milady ;  mais,  pour  vous  le  rendre,  il  faut  absolument 
d'abord  me  le  preter." 

*  "I  find,"  says  Lady  Holland,  "that  Tallcj-rand  used  to  tell  this  story  as 
having  passed  between  Cardinal  De  la  Rochc-Guyon,  a  celebrated  epicure, 
and  his  confessor." 

Moore  in  his  Diary  (April  2,  1833)  has  a  similar  mot  of  Talleyrand  m 
connection  with  the  above  :  "  On  some  occasion  wlien  M.  very  ill,  liad  flillen 
on  the  floor  and  was  grasping  at  it  violently  with  his  hands  '  II  veut  absolument 
descendre,'  said  T.  His  friend  Montrond  took  his  revenge  in  the  style  of  his 
master  —  Madame  Flamelin  reproached  M.  de  Montrond  with  his  attachment 
to  Talleyrand  :  '  Heavens,'  he  replied,  '  who  could  help  liking  him,  he  is  so 
wicked !' " 

A  few  of  the  neat  sayings  of  Talleyrand,  cun-ent  in  London  society  with 
the  above  and  of  a  similar  character,  also  from  Moore's  Diary  : — 

"At  breakfast  at  Lord  Lansdowne's,  Madame  Durazzo,  in  talking  of 
poor  Miss  Bathurst  (who  was  drowned  at  Rome),  mentioned  that  TallejTand 
in  reading  an  account  of  it  (in  which  it  was  said  that  her  uncle  plunged  in 
after  her,  and  that  M.  Laval  was  in  the  greatest  grief),  said,  '  M.  de  Laval 
aussi  s'est  pimge,  mais  da?is  la  plus  profonde  douleur.' 

To  some  notorious  reprobate  (said  to  be  Rivarol)  who  remarked  to  him,  'Je 
n'aifait  qu'une  seule  mechancete  dans  ma  vie;'  Talleyrand  answered,  ' Et  celled- 
Id,  quand  finira-t-elle  ?' 

Of  a.  lady  who  was  praised  for  her  beaucmip  d'esprit :  '  Oui,  beaucoup  d'es- 
prit,  beaucoup  ;  elle  ne  s'en  sert  jamais.'  " 

Jordan,  ia  his  Autobiography  has  the  following : — 


438  MACAULAY. 

MACAULAT. 

To  take  Macaulay  out  of  literature  and  society,  and  put  him  in 
the  House  of  Conunons,  is  like  tr'Jsing  the  chief  physician  out  of 
London  during  a  pestilence. 

"  Oh  yes !  we  both  talk  a  great  deal,  but  I  don't  believe  Ma- 
caulay ever  did  hear  my  voice,"  he  exclaimed  laughing.  "  Some- 
times, when  I  have  told  a  good  story,  I  have  thought  to  myself, 
Poor  Macaulay !  he  will  be  very  sorry  some  day  to  have  missed 
hearing  that." 

I  ALWAYS  prophecied  his  greatness  from  the  first  moment  I  saw 

"  "When  an  inquisitive  quidnunc  who  squinted,  asked  Talleyrand  how  ho 
thought  certain  measures  would  go,  he  replied  '  comme  vous  voyez.' 

"A  council  of  the  ministry  having  sat  upon  some  question  an  eminent 
nobleman  met  him  as  he  came  from  the  meeting :  '  Que  s'est-il  passe  dans  ce 
conseil'?'  to  which  he  replied,  '  Trois  heures!' 

"In  a  period  of  rapid  political  change  in  Paris  he  was  asked  what  he 
thought  of  it :  '  Why,'  he  replied,  '  in  the  morning  I  believe ;  in  the  afternoon 
I  change  my  opinion,  and  in  the  evening,  I  have  no  opinion  at  all.' 

When  he  was  INIinister  for  Foreign  Affairs  and  there  was  a  report  in  Paris 
of  the  death  of  George  III.,  a  banker,  full  of  speculative  anxieties,  asked  him 
if  it  was  true.  'Some  say,'  he  replied,  'tliat  the  King  of  England  is  dead, 
others  say  that  he  is  not  dead ;  but  do  you  wish  to  know  my  opinion  V 
'  Most  anxiously,  Prince  !'  '  Well,  then,  I  believe  neither !  I  mention  this 
in  confidence  to  you  ;  but  I  I'ely  on  your  discretion ;  the  slightest  imprudence 
on  your  part  would  compromise  me  most  seriously  !" 

To  these  may  be  added  a  brace  of  anecdotes  from  the  recently-published 
Journal  of  Thomas  Raikes  : — 

"A  certain  Vicomte  de  V ,  friend  of  Talleyrand,  who  witli  him  fre- 
quented some  distinguished  soirees,  where  high  play  was  encouraged,  had  in- 
curred some  suspicions  not  very  creditable  to  his  honour.  Detected  one 
evening  in  a  flagrant  attempt  to  defraud  his  adversary,  he  was  very  uncere- 
moniously turned  out  of  the  house,  with  a  threat,  that  if  he  ever  made  his 
appearance  there  again,  he  should  be  thrown  out  of  the  window.  The  next 
day  he  called  upon  M.  de  Talleyrand  to  relate  his  misfortune,  and  protest  his 
innocence  :  '  Ma  position  est  tres  embarrassante,'  said  the  Vicomte,  '  donncz 
moi  done  un  conseil.'  '  Dame  !  mon  cher,  je  vous  conseille  de  ne  phis  jouor 
qu'au  rez  de  chaussfe'  (the  ground  floor). 

"When  the  Duchesse  de  Berri  had  disappeared  from  La  Vendee  in  1832 
there  were  reports  that  she  had  been  seen  in  various  places  in  France  but  al- 
ways disguised.  Talleyrand  remarked  :  '  Je  ne  sais  pas  si  vous  la  trouverez 
en  la  Vendee,  ou  en  Italic,  ou  en  HoUande,  mais  ce  qu'il  y  a  de  sur,  c'est, 
que  vous  la  trou  rcrcz  en  hoinme.' " 


LORD   DUDLEY.  439 

him,  then  a  very  young  and  unknown  man  on  the  Nortliern 
Circuit.  There  are  no  limits  to  his  knowledge,  on  small  subjects 
as  well  as  great ;  he  is  like  a  book  in  breeches. 

Yes,  I  agree,  he  is  certainly  more  agreeable  since  his  return  from 
India.  His  enemies  might  have  said  before  (though  I  never  did 
so)  that  he  talked  rather  too  much ;  but  now  he  has  occasional 
flashes  of  silence,  that  make  his  conversation  perfectly  delightful. 
But  what  is  far  better  and  more  important  than  all  this  is,  that  I 
believe  Macaulay  to  be  incorruptible.  You  might  lay  ribbons, 
stars,  garters,  wealth,  title,  before  him  in  vain.  He  has  an  honest 
genuine  love  of  his  country,  and  the  world  could  not  bribe  him  to 
neglect  her  interests. 


LORD   DUDLEY. 

Oh  don't  read  those  twelve  volumes  till  they  are  made  into  a 
consomme  of  two.  Lord  Dudley  did  still  better ;  he  waited  till 
they  blew  over. 

Lord  Dudley  was  one  of  the  most  absent  men  I  think  I  ever 
met  in  society.  One  day  he  met  me  in  the  street,  and  invited  me 
to  meet  myself.  "  Dine  with  me  to-day ;  dine  with  me,  and  I  will 
get  Sydney  Smith  to  meet  you."  I  admitted  the  temptation  he 
held  out  to  me,  but  said  I  was  engaged  to  meet  him  elsewhere. 
Another  time,  on  meeting  me,  he  turned  back,  put  his  arm  through 
mine,  muttering,  "  I  don't  mind  walking  with  him  a  little  Avay ;  I'll 
walk  with  him  as  far  as  the  end  of  the  street."     As  we  proceeded 

together,  W passed :  "  That  is  the  villain,"  exclaimed  he, 

"  who  helped  me  yesterday  to  asparagus,  and  gave  me  no  toast." 
He  very  nearly  overset  my  gravity  once  in  the  pulpit.  He  was 
sitting  immediately  under  me,  apparently  very  attentive,  when 
suddenly  he  took  up  his  stick,  as  if  he  had  been  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  tapping  on  the  ground  with  it,  cried  out  in  a  low 
but  very  audible  whisper,  "  Hear !  hear !  hear  !"* 

*  There  is  a  more  famous  anecdote  of  Lord  Dudlej^'s  absence  of  mind. 
He  was  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs  in  Canning's  Administration, 
when,  at  an  important  moment  too,  shortly  before  the  battle  of  Navarfno,  he 
addressed  a  letter  intended  for  the  P'rench  Ambassador  Polignac,  to  the  Rus- 
sian Ambassador,  Prince  Lieven.     The  latter  took  it  for  a  hoax,  and  promptijf 


440  LUTTllELL. 


LUTTRELL. 


I  THINK  it  was  Luttrell  who  used  to  say 's  face  ctlways 

reminded  him  of  boiled  mutton  and  near  rehitions. 

returned  it.  He  remarked  it  was  a  good  trick,  but  he  was  "  trop  Jin,"  and  a 
diplomatist  of  too  high  a  standing  to  be  so  easily  caught.  Lord  Dudley's 
habit  of  soliloquizing  in  company  probably  furnished  the  original  of  a  char- 
acter in  Theodore  Hook's  Gilbert  Gurncy,  the  East  India  Nabob,  Mr.  Nubley, 
who  carries  on  polite  conversations  with  his  friends,  with  a  sotto  voce  accom- 
paniment of  his  real  and  less  complimentary  opinions.  Lockhart,  in  an 
admirable  sketch  of  Dudley  in  the  Quarterly  Review,  relates  one  of  these 
adventures  :  "  He  had  a  particular  dislike  to  be  asked  to  give  any  one  a  lift 
in  his  carriage,  in  which  he  thought  over  the  occurrences  of  the  day,  more, 
perhaps,  than  halt  the  members  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians.  An 
ingenious  tormento  •  of  Brookcs's  begged  him  to  give  a  cast  to  a  homeward 
bound,  unconscious  victim.  It  could  not  be  refused.  The  unhappy  pair  set 
out  in  their  chariot,  and  arrived,  silently,  near  Mount  street,  when  Lord 
Dudley  muttered  audibly,  '  What  a  bore  !  It  would  be  civil  to  say  something. 
Perhaps  I  had  better  ask  him  to  dinner.  I'll  think  about  it.'  His  com- 
j)anion,  a  person  of  infinite  foncy,  and  to  whom  Lord  Dudley  afterward  took 
a  great  liking,  re-muttered,  after  a  due  pause,  '  What  a  bore  !  Suppose  he 
should  ask  me  to  dinner !     What  should  I  do  ?     I'll  think  about  it.'  " 

Moore,  in  his  diary,  has  frequent  mention  of  Ward.  He  notices  "  his  two 
voices ;  squeak  and  bass  ;  seeming,  as  some  one  remarked,  as  if  '  Lord 
Dudley  were  conversing  with  Lord  Ward.'  Somebody  who  proj)Osed  a  short 
walk  witli  him,  heard  iiim  mutter  to  himself,  introspectively,  "  I  think  I  may 
endure  him  for  ten  minutes."  One  day  that  he  had  Lord  Lansdowne  to 
dinner  with  him,  Lord  Dudley  took  the  opportunity  to  read  to  himself 
Hume's  History  of  England. 

Lord  Dudley  was,  in  his  youtli,  at  Edinburgh,  in  the  family  of  Dugald 
Stewart,  studied  at  Oxford,  and  entered  Parliamentary  life  early.  The 
family  estate,  derived  from  the  coal  and  iron  mines  of  Worcester,  was  enor- 
mous. Lord  Dudley's  income  was  some  eighty  thousand  pounds  a  year. 
With  this  extraordinary  wealth  at  command,  and  a  line  classical  culture,  en- 
deared, by  his  virtues,  to  the  best  London  society,  and  fond  of  gathenng  its 
members  about  him,  he  passed  much  of  his  time  unhappily,  in  consequence  of  an 
organic  malformation  of  the  brain,  which  he  traced  to  an  early  neglect  of 
physical  training.  "  Melancholy  marked  liim  for  her  own."  His  "  Letters" 
to  his  friend  Copleston,  the  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  published  after  his  deaths 
afford  many  proofs  of  this. 

As  a  speaker  in  Parliament,  where,  with  a  few  exceptions,  he  was  always 
on  the  strong  conservative  side,  he  was  celebi-ated  for  his  fine,  studied 
speeches.  Rogers  burlesqued  his  method  in  an  exceedingly  neat,  malicious 
epigram,  which  Byron,  in  conversation  wi'h  Lady  Blessington,  pronounced 
"  one  of  the  best  in  the  English  language,  with  the  true  Greek  talent  of  ex- 
pressing, by  implication  what  is  wished  to  be  conveyed :" — 


SIDE-DISHES.  441 

Was  not very  disagreeable?  "WIij,  he  was  as  disa- 
greeable as  the  occasion  would  permit,"  Luttrell  said. 

LuTTRELL  used  to  Say,  I  hate  the  sight  of  monkeys,  they  remind 
me  so  of  poor  relations. 

Mrs.  Sydney  was  dreadfully  alarmed  about  her  side-dishes  the 
first  time  Luttrell  paid  us  a  visit,  and  grew  pale  as  the  covers 
were  lifted ;  but  they  stood  the  test.  Luttrell  tasted  and  praised. 
He  spent  a  week  with  us,  and  having  associated  him  only  with 
Pall  Mall,  I  confess  I  was  agreeably  surprised  to  find  how  pleasant 
an  inmate  he  made  of  a  country-house,  and  almost  of  a  family 
party ;  so  light  in  hand,  so  willing  to  be  pleased.  Some  of  his 
Irish  stories,  too,  were  most  amusing,  and  his  manner  of  telling 
them  so  good.  One  :  "  Is  your  master  at  home,  Paddy  ?"  "  No, 
your  honour."  "  Why,  I  saw  him  go  in  five  minutes  ago."  "  Faith, 
your  honour,  he's  not  exactly  at  home ;  he's  only  there  in  the 
back -yard  a-shooting  rats  with  cannon,  your  honour,  for  his  devar- 
sion." 

Luttrell  came  over  for  a  day  (writes  Smith,  to  Lady  Holland, 

"  Ward  has  no  heart,  they  say,  but  I  deny  it ; 
He  has  a  heart,  and  gets  his  speeches  by  it. 

Dudley,  (as  Lockhart  remarks),  took  capital  i-evenge,  in  a  review  of  Rogers' 
Columbus,  in  the  Quarterly,  a  specimen  of  cool,  exhausting  criticism. 
Rogers  comes  out  of  it  like  a  cat  taken,  at  the  last  gasp,  from  the  receiver 
of  an  air-pump.  There  are  several  otiier  examples  of  Dudley's  powers  as  a 
reviewer,  in  his  articles  in  the  Quarterly,  on  Home  Tooke,  Charles  James 
Fox,  and  Miss  Edgeworth. 

Luttrell,  by  the  way,  had  his  couplet  on  "the  joke  about  Lord  Dudley's 
speaking  by  heart."     Moore  preserves  it  in  his  Diary : — 

"  In  vain  my  affections  the  ladies  are  seeking  : 
If  I  give  up  my  heart,  there's  an  end  to  my  speaking." 

Lady  Blcssington  also  tried  an  adaptation  of  it : — 

"  The  charming  Mary  has  no  mind  they  say; 
I  prove  she  has  —  it  changes  every  day 

It  was  Lord  Dudley  who  made  the  remark,  when  he  heard  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  pecuniary  disasters  :  "  Scott  ruined  !  the  author  of  Waverley  rained  ! 
Let  every  man  to  whom  he  has  given  months  of  delight  give  him  a  sixpence, 
and  he  will  rise  to-morrow  morning  richer  than  Rothschild." 

The  Eaii  of  Dudley  died,  unmarried,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two,  in  1833. 

10* 


442  VEAL-SOUP. 

from  Combe  Florey,  in  1829),  from  whence  I  know  not,  but  1 
thought  not  from  good  pastures;  at  least,  he  had  not  liis  usual 
soup-and-j^attic  look.  There  Avas  a  forced  smile  upon  his  counte- 
nance, which  seemed  to  indicate  plain  roast  and  boiled ;  and  a  sort 
of  apple-pudding  depression,  as  if  he  had  been  staying  with  a  cler- 
gyman. 

I  was  at  Bowood  last  week  (says  Smith  in  another  letter  about 
the  same)  ;  the  only  persons  there  were  seashore  Calcott  and  his 
wife  —  two  very  sensible,  agi'eeable  people.  Luttrell  came  over 
for  the  day ;  he  was  very  agreeable,  but  spoke  too  lightly,  I 
thought,  of  veal-soup.  I  took  him  aside,  and  reasoned  the  matter 
with  him,  but  in  vain ;  to  speak  the  truth,  Luttrell  is  not  steady  in 
his  judgments  on  dishes.  Individual  failures  with  him  soon  degen- 
erate into  generic  objections,  till,  by  some  fortunate  accident,  he 
eats  himself  into  better  opinions.  A  person  of  more  calm  reflec- 
tion thinks  not  only  of  what  he  is  consuming  at  that  moment,  but 
of  the  soups  of  the  same  kind  he  has  met  with  in  a  long  course  of 
dining,  and  which  have  gradually  and  justly  elevated  the  species. 
I  am  perhaps  making  too  much  of  this ;  but  the  failures  of  a  man 
of  sense  are  always  painful. 

Again,  in  1843  : — 

Luttrell  is  staying  here.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  innocence  of 
our  conversation.  It  is  one  continued  eulogy  upon  man-and-Avoman- 
kind.  You  would  suppose  that  two  Arcadian  old  gentlemen,  after 
shearing  their  flocks,  had  agreed  to  spend  a  week  together  upon 
curds  and  cream,  and  to  indulge  in  gentleness  of  speech  and  soft- 
ness of  mind.* 

*  Luttrcll's  couplets,  epigrams,  puns,  and  parodies,  his  vers  de  societe,  were 
always  of  the  neatest.  He  "  talks  more  sweetly  than  birds  can  sing,"  writes 
Sydney  Smith.  Rogers  said  none  of  the  talkers  whom  he  met  in  London 
society  could  "slide  in  a  brilliant  thing  with  such  readiness."  Luttrell  wrote 
verses  of  the  day,  for  the  Times  Newspaper.  His  "Letters  to  Julia  in 
Rhyme,"  a  third  improved  edition  of  which  appeared  in  1822,  brought  him 
to  the  notice  of  the  public.  It  is  a  vehicle  for  the  description  of  London 
manners  and  ideas.  Julia  is  an  ambitious  coquette,  a  widow,  to  wliom  the 
epistles  are  addressed  by  a  friend  of  her  lover.  The  sufferings  of  the  inamo- 
rato, and  the  amusements  of  the  town,  from  which  he  is  driven  by  the  lady's 
ill-treatment,  furnish  the  themes,  which  are  elegantly  presented  in  a  pure 
witty  strain  of  verse.     Luttrell  wrote  also  "  Crockford  House,  a  Rhapsody," 


A  SYDNEY  SMITH  NOVEL.  443 

A  NOVEL  BY  SYDNEY  SMITH.* 

When  Smith  lost  a  few  hundreds  by  the  Pennsylvania  Bonds,  a 
publisher  called  on  him  offering  to  retrieve  his  fortunes,  if  he  would 
get  up  a  three-volume  novel. 

in  two  cantos,  in  trochaic  eight  syllable  catalectlc.  It  appeared  in  1827,  when 
Crockford  established  his  magnificent  "  hell"  in  James  street.  The  moral  is 
well-pointed,  but  the  verse  is  feeble  for  the  satiric  demand  of  the  occasion. 
It  was  accompanied  bj'  a  little  poem,  "  A  Rhymer  in  Home." 

Byron,  as  reported  in  the  Conversations  with  Lady  Blessington,  describes 
the  traits  of  Luttrell :  "Of  course,"  he  said,  "you  know  Luttrell.  lie  is  a 
most  agreeable  member  of  society,  the  best  sayer  of  good  things,  and  the 
most  epigrammatic  conversationist  I  ever  met  with.  There  is  a  terseness  and 
wit  mingled  with  fancy,  in  his  observations,  that  no  one  else  possesses,  and  no 
one  so  peculiarly  understands  the  apropos.  Ills  Advice  to  Julia  is  ])ointed, 
witty,  and  full  of  character,  showing  in  every  line  a  knowledge  of  society,  and 
a  tact  rarely  met  with.  Then,  unlike  all  or  most  wits,  Luttrell  is  never  ob- 
trusive :  even  the  choicest  bon-mots  are  only  brought  forth  when  perfectly  ap- 
plicable, and  then  are  given  in  a  tone  of  good-breeding  which  enhances  their 
value." 

Moore  has  a  number  of  LuttrcU's  "felicities"  in  his  Diary.  "Walking  with 
him  one  day,  tlie  poet  remarked  a  saying  on  Sharp's  very  dark  complexion,  that 
he  looked  as  if  the  dye  of  his  old  trade  (hat-making),  had  got  engrained  into 
his  face,  "  Yes,"  said  Luttrell,  "  darkness  that  may  be  felt."  He  gave  this 
illustration  of  the  English  climate  :  "  On  a  fine  day,  like  looking  up  a  chim- 
ney ;  on  a  rainy  day,  like  looking  down  it."  He  told  a  capital  story  of  a  tailor^ 
who  (we  follow  Moore's  words)  used  to  be  seen  attending  the  Greek  lectures 
constantly ;  and  when  some  one  noticed  it  to  him  as  odd,  the  tailor  saying 
modestly,  that  he  knew  too  well  what  became  his  station,  to  intrude  himself, 
as  an  auditor  on  any  of  those  subjects  of  which,  from  his  rank  in  life,  he 
must  be  supposed  to  be  ignorant;  but  "really,"  he  added,  "at  a  Greek  lec- 
ture, I  think  we  are  all  pretty  much  on  a  par." 

Rogers  pronounced  Luttrell's  epigram  on  Miss  Ti-ee,  the  singer,  "  quite  a 
little  fairy  tale." 

"  On  this  tree  when  a  nightingale  settles  and  sings, 
The  tree  will  return  her  as  good  as  she  brings," 

Wc  are  indebted  to  Mr.  Washington  Irving  for  the  following  anecdote,  not 
hitherto  in  print.  He  was  walking  in  company  with  Moore  and  Luttrell,  at 
the  former's  suburban  residence.  La  Butte,  near  Paris,  when  the  conversation 
fell  on  a  female  aeronaut,  who  had  not  been  heard  of  since  her  recent  ascent. 
Moore  described  her  upward  progress  —  the  last  seen  of  her  she  was  still  as- 
cending, ascending, "  Handed  out,"  slipped  in  Luttrell,  "  by  Enoch  and  Elijah." 

Henry  Luttrell  died  at  his  London  residence,  in  December,  1851,  in  his 
eighty-^rst  year. 

*  This  and  the  three  following  passages  are  from  the  Memoir  of  Rev. 
Richard  Harris  Barbara,  by  R.  H.  D.  Barbara,  the  author  of  the  "  Ingoldsbv 


444  WILD    CURATES. 

"  T^^ell,  sir,"  said  the  Rev.  Sydney,  after  some  seeming  consid- 
eration, "  if  I  do  so,  I  can't  travel  out  of  my  own  line,  ne  sutor  ul- 
tra crepidam  ;  I  must  have  an  archdeacon  for  my  hero,  to  fall  in 
love  with  the  pew-opener,  with  the  clerk  for  a  confidant  —  tyran- 
nical interference  of  the  churchwardens  —  clandestine  correspond- 
ence concealed  under  the  hassocks  —  appeal  to  the  parishioners, 
etc." 

"  All  that,  sir,"  said  the  publisher,  "  I  would  not  presume  to  in- 
terfere with ;  I  would  leave  it  entirely  to  your  own  inventive 
genius." 

"  Well,  sir,  I  am  not  prepared  to  come  to  terms  at  present,  but 
if  ever  I  do  undei-take  such  a  work  you  shall  certainly  have  the 
refusal." 


THE    BISHOP    OF    NEW    ZEALAND. 

.  On  the  departui-e  of  the  Bishop  of  New  Zealand  for  his  diocese 
Smith  recommended  him  to  have  regard  to  the  minor  as  well  as  to 
the  more  grave  duties  of  his  station  —  to  be  given  to  hospitality — 
and,  in  order  to  meet  the  tastes  of  his  native  guests,  never  to  be 
without  a  smoked  little  boy  in  the  bacon-rack,  and  a  cold  clergy- 
man on  the  sideboard.  "  And  as  for  myself,"  my  lord,  "  he  con- 
cluded, "  all  I  can  say  is,  that  when  your  new  parishioners  do  eat 
you,  I  sincerely  hope  you  may  disagree  with  them." 


WILD    CURATES. 


Of  Dean  C he  said  his  only  adequate  punislmient  would  be 

to  be  preached  to  death  by  w^ild  curates. 


VIRGILIAN    PUN. 

Smith  told  me  of  the  motto  he  had  proposed  for  Bishop  Bur- 
gess's arms,  in  allusion  to  his  brother,  the  well-known  fish-sauce 
projector. 

"  Gravi  jampridem  saiicia  cura.* 

Legends,"  whose  Diary  furnishes  us  with  several  choice  specimens  of  Smith's 
pleasantry.     He  was  a  Minor  Canon  of  St.  Paul's,  and  of  course  had  good 
opportunity  to  study  Ids  friend's  luimour. 
*  ^neid.  iv 


SPECIE    AND   SPECIES.  445 


DOUBLING    THE    CAPE. 


Puns  are  frequently  provocative.     One  day,  after  dinner  wiili 
a  Nabob,  he  was  giving  us  Madeira — 

"  London — East  India  —  picked — particular," 
tlien  a  second  tliought  struck  him,  and  he  remembered  that  hf  had 
a  few  flasks  ol  Constantia  in  the  house,  and  he  produced  one.  lie 
gave  us  just  a  glass  apiece.  We  became  clamorous  for  another, 
but  the  old  qui-hi  was  firm  in  refusal.  "  Well,  well,"  said  Sydney 
Smith,  a  man  for  whom  I  have  a  particular  regard,  "  since  we 
can't  double  the  Cape,  we  must  e'en  go  back  to  Madeira."  We 
all  laughed — our  host  most  of  all  —  and  he  too,  luckily,  had  his 
joke.  "  Be  of  Good  Hope,  you  shall  double  it ;"  at  which  we  all 
laughed  still  more  immoderately,  and  drank  the  second  flask.* 


SPECIE    AND    SPECIES. 

Sydney  Smith,  preaching  a  charity  sermon,  frequently  repeated 
the  assertion,  that,  of  all  nations.  Englishmen  were  most  distin- 
guished for  generosity  and  the  love  of  their  species.  The  collec- 
tion happened  to  be  inferior  to  his  expectations,  and  he  said,  that 
he  had  evidently  made  a  great  mistake,  and  that  his  expression 
should  have  been,  that  they  were  distinguished  for  the  love  of  their 
specie.f 

A  conversational  cook. 

Moore  set  Sydney  Smith  at  home  in  a  hackney-coach  after  a 
pleasant  dinner-party  at  Agar  Ellis's.  On  his  remarking  "  how 
well  and  good-humouredly  the  host  had  mixed  us  all  up  together," 
Smith  said,  "  That's  the  great  use  of  a  good  conversational  cook, 
who  says  to  his  company,  '  I'll  make  a  good  pudding  of  you  ;  it's 
no  matter  what  you  came  into  the  bowl,  you  must  come  out  a  pud- 
dmg.'  '  Dear  me,'  says  one  of  the  ingredients,  '  wasn't  I  just  now 
an  egg  ?'  but  he  feels  the  batter  sticking  to  him  now."{ 

*  Maginn's  Maxims  of  Odohcrty.  Number  Twenty    Blackwood's  Mag.^ 
1824.    . 
t  The  World  Wc  Live  In.     Blackwood,  June,  1837. 
$  Moore's  Diary,  May  30,  182G. 


446  ARTICLES   AND   MUSES. 

A    FALSE    QUANTITY. 

There  is  a  current  remark  attributed  to  him,  that  a  false  quan- 
tity at  the  commencement  of  the  career  of  a  young  man  intended 
for  public  life,  was  rarely  got  over ;  and  when  a  lady  asked  him 
what  a  false  quantity  was,  he  explained  it  to  be  in  a  man  thq  sam(j 
as  a.  faux  pas  in  a  woman. 


A    DISPUTANT.* 

He  said  that was  so  fond  of  contradiction,  that  he  would 

throw  up  the  window  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  contradict  the 
watchman  who  was  callinor  the  hour. 


MEDICAL    ADVICE. 


When  his  physician  advised  him  to  "take  a  walk  upon  an 
empty  stomach,"  Smith  asked,  "  Upon  whose  ?" 


THE    ARTICLES    AND    THE    MUSES. 

"  I  HAD  a  very  odd  dream  last  night,"  said  he ;  "  I  dreamed 
that  there  were  thirty-nine  Muses  and  nine  Articles  ;  and  my 
head  is  still  quite  confused  about  them."t 


APOSTOLICAL    SUCCESSION. 

Smith  said,  "  The  Bishop  of is  so  like  Judas,  that  I  now 

firmly  beheve  in  the  apostolical  succession. 

*  This  and  the  three  following  are  from  Dyee's  Eecollections  of  the  Table- 
Talk  of  Samuel  Rogers. 

t  There  is  a  better  version  of  this  in  Lady  Holland's  Memoir  :  "  Now  I 
mean  not  to  drink  one  drop  of  wine  to-day,  and  I  shall  he  mad  with  spirits. 
I  always  am  when  I  drink  no  wine.  It  is  curious  the  effect  a  thimbleful  of 
wine  has  upon  me ;  I  feel  as  flat  as 's  jokes ;  it  destroys  my  understand- 
ing :  I  forget  the  number  of  Muses,  and  think  them  thirty-nine  of  course ; 
and  only  get  myself  right  again  by  repeating  the  lines,  and  finding  '  Descend, 
ye  thirty-a^ne,'  two  feet  too  long." 


COOL  OF  THE  EVENING.  447 


SENTENCE  OX  AN  ALDERMAN. 


Sydney  Smith  was  asked  what  penalty  the  Court  of  Aldermen 
could  inflict  on  Don-Key  for  bringing  them  into  contempt  by  his 
late  escapade.  He  said,  "  Melted  butter  with  his  tui'bot  for  a 
twelvemonth  instead  of  lobster-sauce."* 


BOOKED. 


When  the  great  Nestor  of  our  poets  (Rogers)  advanced  as  a 
great  truth,  at  his  own  table,  that  no  man  became  great  but  by  get- 
ting on  the  shoulders  of  another,  Sydney  Smith,  who  was  pres- 
ent, was  so  pleased  with  the  remark,  that  liis  favourite  expression, 
when  he  heard  anything  very  good,  "  booked"  was  uttered  by  him 
very  emphatically  on  this  occasion.  By  "  booked"  Sydney  meant 
to  imply — accepted,  endorsed,  and  to  be  repeated."! 


YOUTH    AND    FAMILIARITY.j 

One  evening,  at  a  dinner  party,  he  was  excessively  annoyed  by 
the  familiarity  of  a  young  fop,  who  constantly  addressed  him  as 
"  Smith" — "  Smith,  pass  the  wine,"  and  so  forth.  Presently  the 
young  gentleman  stated  that  he  had  received  an  invitation  to  dine 
with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  asked  the  reverend  canon 
"  what  sort  of  a  fellow"  he  was. 

"A  very  good  sort  of  a  fellow,  indeed,"  replied  the  satirist; 
"only,  let  me  give  you  a  piece  of  advice — don't  call  him  Howley." 

This  rebuff  vastly  amused  the  company,  but  the  object  of  it,  be- 
ing a  fool  at  all  points,  did  not  see  this  point,  and  talked  on  in 
happy  unconsciousness.  Soon  afterward,  one  of  the  company 
rose  to  depart,  pleading  an  engagement  to  a  soiree  at  Gore  House. 

"  Take  me  with  you,"  roars  young  Hopeful. — "  I've  the  greatest 
possible  desire  to  know  Lady  Blessington." 

This  request  was  very  naturally  demurred  to,  on  the  ground 
that  a  visitor  was  not  authorized  to  introduce  uninvited  guests. 

*  Letter  of  Jckyll  to  Lady  Blessington,  Sept.  1833.  Sir  John  Key,  alder- 
man and  mayor,  a  notoriety  of  the  times. 

t  TowH  and  Table  Talk.     lUus.  Lond.  News,  Feb.  25,  1854. 

J  This  and  the  four  following  arc  waifs  and  strays,  to  which  we  can  assijjn 
no  particular  credit 


448  A    VESTRY. 

"  Oh  !"  said  Sydney  Smith,  "  never  mind ;  I'm  sure  that  her 
Ladyship  will  be  delighted  to  see  our  young  friend :  the  weather's 
uncommonly  hot.  and  you  can  say  that  you  have  brought  with  you 
the  cool  of  the  evening." 

"  I  HOPE,  my  friend,"  he  said,  kindly^,  to  a  brilliant  young  man, 
who  had  freely  exhibited  his  opinions  to  the  company,  on  a  variety 
of  subjects,  "that  you  will  know  as  much  ten  years  hence  as  you 
do  now !" 


DR.    W^HETVELL. 

Smith  is  reported  to  have  have  said  of  Dr.  Whewell,  of  Cam- 
bridge, whose  universality  in  authorship  is  one  of  the  marvels  of 
the  time,  that  omniscience  was  his  forte,  and  science  his  foible. 


TWELVE-PARSON    POWER. 

Sitting  by  a  brother  clergyman  at  dinner,  he  afterward  re- 
marked, that  his  dull  neighbour  had  a  twelve-parson  power  of 
conversation. 


ASSUMPTIONS. 

There  are  three  things  which  every  man  fancies  he  can  do  — 
farm  a  small  property,  drive  a  gig,  and  write  an  article  for  a  re- 
view. 


A    VESTRY. 


At  a  church  conference  on  the  expediency  of  securing  the  new 
street  pavement  of  wooden  blocks,  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that 
the  thing  might  be  accomplished  if  the  vestry  would  lay  their 
heads  together. 


DUNCES. 

If  men  (writes  Smith)  are  to  be  fools,  it  were  better  that  they 
were  fools  in  little  matters  than  in  great :  dullness,  turned  up  with 
temerity,  is  a  livery  all  the  worse  for  the  facings ;  and  the  most 
tremendous  of  all  things  is  a  magnanimous  dunce. 


PRACTICAL   JOKING.  4'4'J 

PRACTICAL  JOKING.* 

On  one  occasion,  when  some  London  visitors  were  expected,  he 
called  in  art  to  aid  nature,  and  caused  oranges  to  be  tied  to  the 
shrubs  in  the  drive  and  garden.  The  stratagem  succeeded  admir- 
ably, and  great  was  his  exultation  when  an  unlucky  urchin  from 
the  village  was  detected  in  the  act  of  sucking  one  through  a 
quill.  It  was  as  good,  he  said,  as  the  birds  pecking  at  Zeuxis' 
grapes,  or  the  donkeys  munching  Jeffrey's  supposed  myrtles  for 
thistles.  Another  time,  on  a  lady's  happening  to  hint  that  the 
pretty  paddock  would  be  improved  by  deer,  he  fitted  his  two 
donkeys  with  antlers,  and  placed  them  with  their  extraordinary 
headgear  immediately  in  front  of  the  windows.  The  effect,  enhanced 
by  the  puzzled  looks  of  the  animals,  was  ludicrous  in  the  extreme. 

But  in  his  most  frolicsome  moods,  he  never  practised  what  is 
called  practical  joking,  agreeing  in  opinion  on  this  topic  with  the 
late  Marquis  of  Hertford,  who  checked  a  party  of  ingenious 
tormentors  at  Sudbourn  with  the  remark,  that  the  human  mind 
was  various,  and  that  there  was  no  knowing  how  much  melted 
butter  a  gentleman  would  bear  in  his  pocket  without  quarreling. 
There  was  one  practical  joke,  however,  which  Sydney  admitted 
he  should  like  to  see  repeated,  if  only  as  an  experiment  in  physics 
and  metaphysics.  It  was  the  one  played  off  in  the  last  century 
on  a  Mr.  O'Brien,  whose  bedroom  windows  were  carefully  boarded 
up,  so  that  not  a  ray  of  light  could  penetrate.  When  he  rang  his 
bell  in  the  morning,  a  servant  appeared,  half  dressed  and  yawning 
with  a  candle,  and  anxiously  asked  if  he  was  ill.  Ashamed  of  the 
fancied  irregularity,  the  patient  recomposed  himself  to  sleep,  but 
at  the  end  of  a  couple  of  hours  rang  again,  and  again  the  same 
pantomime  was  enacted.  "  Open  the  shutters."  They  were  opened, 
and  all  without  was  as  dark  as  a  wolf's  mouth.  He  was  kept  in 
bed  till  driven  to  desperation  by  hunger,  when  rushing  out  upon 
the  landing-place,  he  found  that  he  had  only  just  time  to  dress 
for  a  late  dinner. 


CLERICAL    ANGLING, 

In  an  argument  with  a  serious  baronet,  who  objected  to  clerical 
sporting  in  the  abstract,  he  stood  up  for  angling.     "I  give  up  fly- 

*  This  and  the  five  followinf;;  paragraphs  arc  from  an  article  on  Sydney 
Smith  in  the  Edinburgh,  Kevicw,  July,  1855. 


150  TABLE   TALK. 

fishing :  it  is  a  liglit,  volatile,  dissiiJated  pursuit.  But  ground-bait, 
with  a  good  steady  float  that  never  bobs  without  a  bite,  is  an  occu- 
pation for  a  bishop,  and  in  no  ways  interferes  with  sermon-making." 
He  once  discovered  some  tench  in  a  pond  at  Sandhill  Park  (a 
seat  of  the  I.ethbridges  close  to  Combe  Florey)  and  kept  the 
secret  till  he  had  caught  every  one  of  them  (an  exploit  requiring 
several  days),  when  he  loudly  triumphed  over  the  fisherman  of 
the  family.  "Writing  to  Lady  Grey,  he  says  :  ''  his  [John  Grey's] 
refusal  of  the  living  of  Sunbury  convinces  me  that  he  is  not  fond 
of  gudgeon-fishing.  I  had  figured  to  myself,  you  and  Lord 
Grey,  and  myself,  engaged  in  that  occupation  upon  the  river 
Thames." 


DINNER-TABLE    CONVEKSATION. 

"  Eloquence,"  says  Bolingbroke,  "must  flow  like  a  stream  that  is 
fed  by  an  abundant  spring,  and  not  sprout  forth  a  little  frothy 
water  on  some  gaudy  day,  and  remain  dry  the  rest  of  the  year." 
So  must  humour,  and  Sydney  Smith's  was  so  fed ;  yet  it  was  sel- 
dom overpowering,  and  never  exhausting,  except  by  the  prolonged 
fits  of  laughter  which  it  provoked.  Although  in  one  of  his  letters 
already  quoted  he  calls  himself  a  diner-out,  he  had  none  of  the 
prescriptive  attributes  of  that  now  happily  almost  extinct  tribe. 
He  had  no  notion  of  talking  for  display.  He  talked  because  he 
could  not  help  it ;  because  his  spirits  were  excited,  and  his  mind 
was  full.  He  consciously  or  unconsciously,  too,  abided  by  Lord 
Chesterfield's  rule,  "  Pay  your  own  reckoning,  but  do  not  treat  the 
whole  company ;  This  being  one  of  the  very  few  cases  in  which 
people  do  not  care  to  be  treated,  every  one  being  fully  convinced 
that  he  has  wherewithal  to  pay."  His  favourite  maxim  (copied 
from  Swift)  was  "  Take  as  many  half-minutes  as  you  can  get,  but 
never  talk  more  than  half  a  minute  without  pausing  and  giving 
others  an  opportunity  to  strike  in."  He  vowed  that  Buchon,  a 
clever  and  amiable  man  of  letters,  who  talked  on  the  opposite 
principle,  was  the  identical  Frenchman  who  murmured  as  he  was 
anxiously  watching  a  rival,  "  S'il  crache  ou  tousse,  il  est  perdu." 
Far  from  being  jealous  of  competition,  he  was  always  anxious  to 
dine  in  company  with  men  who  were  able  and  entitled  to  hold  their 
own  ;  and  he  was  never  pleasanter  than  when  some  guest  of  con- 


MEDICAL  PRACTICE.  451 

genial  turn  of  mind  assisted  him  to  keep  up  the  ball.  On  the 
occasion  of  the  first  attempt  to  bring  him  and  Theodore  Hook 
together,  the  late  Mr.  Lockhart  arrived  with  the  information,  that 
Hook  was  priming  himself  (as  was  his  wont),  at  the  Athenasum 
Club,  with  a  tumbler  or  two  of  hot  punch.  "  Oh,"  exclaimed 
Sydney,  "  if  it  comes  to  that,  let  us  start  fair.  When  Mr.  Hook 
is  announced,  announce  Mr.  Smith's  Punch."  "VAHien  they  did 
meet,  they  contracted  a  mutual  liking,  and  Sydney  ran  on  with  his 
usual  flow  and  felicity ;  but  poor  Hook  had  arrived  at  that  period 
of  his  life  w'hen  his  Avonderful  powers  required  a  greater  amount 
of  stimulants  than  could  be  decently  imbibed  at  an  ordinary  Lon- 
don dinner  with  a  clergyman. 


A    SCOTCH   GARDENER. 

When  he  stopped  to  give  directions  to  his  servants  or  labourers 
he  was  well  worth  listening  to.  On  it  being  pointed  out  to  him 
that  his  gardener  was  tearing  off  too  many  of  the  leaves  of  a  vine, 
he  told  him  to  desist.  The  man,  a  Scotchman,  looked  unconvinced. 
"  Now,  understand  me,"  he  continued ;  "  you  are  probably  right, 
but  I  don't  wish  you  to  do  w  hat  is  right ;  and  as  it  is  my  vine, 
and  there  are  no  moral  laws  for  pruning,  you  may  as  weU  do  as  I 
wish." 


MEDICAL    PRACTICE. 

Sir  Henry  Holland's  high  authority  is  adduced  in  favour  of 
Sydney's  medical  knowledge  ;  but  we  have  our  doubts  whether  the 
health  of  either  Foston  or  Combe  Florey  was  improved  by  the 
indulgence  of  his  hobby  in  this  particular.  A  composition  of  blue- 
pill  which  he  was  glad  to  "  dart  into  the  intestines"  of  any  luckless 
vnght  whom  he  could  induce  to  swallow  it,  sometimes  operated  in  a 
manner  which  he  had  not  anticipated.  One  morning,  at  Combe 
Florey,  a  regular  practitioner  from  Taunton,  who  had  been  going 
his  weekly  round  and  was  considerately  employed  to  overlook  the 
serious  cases,  came  in  with  rather  a  long  face,  and  stated  that  au 
elderly  woman,  who  had  been  talking  the  pill  during  several  con- 
secutive nights  for  the  lumbago,  complained  that  her  gums  w-ere 
sore,  and  he  therefore  advised  the  discontinuance  of  it.     A  London 


452  ILLUSIONS. 

visitor,  wlio  had  tried  it  once,  began  to  titter ;  and  Sydney,  after 
attempting  a  weak  apology  for  liis  practice,  heartily  joined  in  the 
laugh,  exclaiming :  "  What  a  story  you  will  make  of  this,  when 
you  next  breakfast  with  Rogers,  and  how  he  and  Luttrell  will 
triumph  in  it !" 


A    BISHOPS    COURTSHIP. 


Some  one  asked  if  the  Bishop  of was  going  to  marry. 

"  Perhaps  he  may — yet  how  can  a  bishop  marry  ?  How  can  he 
flirt  ?  The  most  he  can  say  is,  '  I  will  see  you  in  the  vestry  after 
service.' " 


TITHES. 

It  is  an  atrocious  way  of  paying  the  clergy.  The  custom  of 
tithe  in  kind  will  seem  incredible  to  our  posterity ;  no  one  will  be- 
lieve in  the  ramiferous  priest  officiating  in  the  cornfield. 


illusions. 

We  naturally  lose  illusions  as  we  get  older,  like  teeth ;  but 
there  is  no  Cartwright  to  fit  a  new  set  into  our  imderstandings.  I 
have,  alas !  only  one  illusion  left,  and  that  is  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury. 


INDEX. 


Acknowledgment  of  Game,  414. 

Affectations  of  Knowledge,  197. 

Affection  and  the  Thermometer,  404. 

Affections,  Uses  of  the  Evil,  246. 

Age,  Benefits  of  Knowledge  to,  152. 

Airj',  G.  P.,  Epigram  on,  403. 

Allen,  John,  Notices  of,  20,  91,  414. 

America,  Articles  on,  184-194. 

,  Travellers  in,  396. 

,  Visit  to,  409. 

American  Debts,  415. 

Letters  on,  69,  353-362. 

Angling,  Clerical,  449. 

Antediluvian  Authorship,  120. 

Anti-Cholera,  403. 

Anti-Melancholv,  423. 

Anti-War,  399."' 

Apologue  of  the  Village,  307. 

Apostolical  Succession,  446. 

Argillaceous  Immortality,  398. 

Articles,  the,  and  the  Muses,  446, 

Assumptions,  448. 

Athenaium,  London,  quoted,  396. 

Aurungzebe,  240. 

Austin,  Sarah,  Edits  Correspondence, 
10  ;  Notice  of  Smith's  Preaching,  98. 

Aversions  and  Arguments,  412. 

Ballot,  the,  68. 

Banks,  Sir  Joseph,  172. 

Barham,  R.  H.,  Diary  of,  quoted,  101, 
435,  443 

Barn-door  Eowl,  133 

Barrow,  Dr.,  Sermons,  33. 

Beach,  Mr.  Hick,  17  ;  Letters  of  Smith 
to,  18. 

Beautiful,  Incentives  of  the,  237  ;  Ac- 
tion of  the,  239. 

Bell,  Robert,  Life  of  Canning,  quoted, 
310. 


Bentham,  Jeremy,  160;  Book  of  FaU 

lacies,  162. 
Berkeley,  Hon.  G.  F.,  119 
Bernard,  Sir  Thomas,  Notices  of,  30, 

35. 
Bible,  Beauty  of  the  Style  of,  423. 
Bishop,  a  Real,  375. 

Sacrifice  of,  on  a  Railroad,  350. 


Bishop's  Courtship,  452. 
Bishops,  Advice  to,  331. 

and  Patronage,  329. 

—  Saturday  Night,  337. 


Blair,  Hugh,  22. 

Blessington,     Lady,      Conversations, 

quoted,  443. 
Blind,  the,  263. 
Bloomfield,  Bishop,  65. 
Bluecoat  Theory,  412. 
Blue-stockings,  424. 
Bobus  Smith,  see  Robert. 
Body,  of  the,  278. 
Bombarding  the  Asiatics,  410. 
Booked,  447. 
Bore,  a,  412. 

Borough  System,  the,  318. 
Botany  Bay,  Description  of,  157-159 
Bourne,  Sturges,  305. 
Breakfast,  a,  409. 
Brougham,  Henry,  19;  Ed.  Review 

27  ;  the  Court  of  Chancery,  320. 
Brown,  Isaac  Hawkins,  302. 
Brown,  Thomas,  21,  27. 
Buffoonery,  231. 

Bull's  Charity  Subscriptions,  162. 
Bulls,  Irish,  232. 
Bunch,  48.  54. 
Burges,  James  Bland,  24. 
Burlesque,  232. 
Burning  Alive  on  Railroads,  350 


\ 


454 


INDEX. 


Byron,  Lord,  Notice  of  "  The  Exo- 
diad,"  24 ;  of  Lady  Holland,  89 ;  No- 
tices of  Smith  in  his  Poems,  93 ;  436. 

Campanero,  the,  168. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  Anecdotes  of,  22, 
89  ;  Lochiel,  quoted,  221. 

Canning,  Georj^e,  10,  160;  his  Para- 
sites, 301  ;   Character  of,  309. 

Canvas-Back  Ducks.  433. 

Carlisle,  Lord,  Notice  of  Robert  Smith, 
14;  Notice  of,  52; 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  92. 

Castlereagh,  Lord,  160. 

Cathedral  Revenue  Bill,  329. 

Catholic  Church  Question,  363-378; 
see  Peter  Plymley. 

Catholic  Toleration,  &c.,  41-3  ;  64. 

Caucus,  185. 

Caution,  in  Use  of  Talent,  214. 

Ceylon,  Inhabitants  of.  111. 

Channinp:,  Dr.,  Sermon  preached  at 
St.  Paul's,  33. 

Charades,  233. 

Cheerfulness,  of,  282. 

Chemistry,  135. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  quoted,  450. 

Childhood,  Sensibility  of,  -llS. 

Chimney-Svveepers,  159. 

•Christian  Charity,  261. 

Church  in  Danger,  299. 

Clapharaites,  the,  301. 

Classes  of  Society,  431. 

Classical  Education,  121-131. 

Club  Life,  38. 

Cobbett,  Notice  of  Netheravon,  18. 

Combe  Florey,  Life  at,  61-63. 

Common  Sense  for  1810,  46. 

Commons,  House  of,  425. 

Composition,  426. 

Conquerors,  Use  of,  157. 

Conversational  Cook,  445. 

Conversation  and  Books,  212. 

Conversation,  Educated,  150. 

Cool  of  the  Evening,  447. 

Copleston,  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  Reply 
to  Ed.  Review,  45 ;  Smith's  Reply 
to,  131-136;  Letters  of  Ward,  440. 

Cork,  Lady,  429. 

Country  House,  431. 

Courage  in  the  Use  of  Talent,  201. 

Cranzius  and  Ernesti,  124,  132. 

Crashaw,  Epigram  of,  221. 

Crowe,  Mrs.,  Letter  to,  410. 

Crumpet's  Ascent  to  St.  Paul's,  333. 

Curates,  338,  340,  341. 

Delphine,  Analysis  of  113. 

Demerara,  168. 


D'Epinay,  Madame,  154-156. 

De  Quincey,  Notice  of  Robert  Smith, 

12. 
De  Stael,  Madame,  Delphine,  113. 
Diary,  Reflections  from,  292-4. 
Dickens,  Charles,  Letters  to,  407-0. 
Digestion  and  the  Virtues,  404. 
Dinner  in  the  Country,  420. 
Dinner  Table  Conversation,  450. 
Discussing,  Habit  of,  203. 
Disputant,  A,  446. 
Dogs,  421,  430. 
Dome  of  St.  Paul's,  434. 
Dort,  Chronicle  of,  332. 
Doubling  the  Cape,  445, 
Doyle,  Dr.,  367. 
Dress  and  Beauty,  424. 
Drunkenness,  289. 
Dunces,  448. 
Dwight,  Timothy,  187. 
Dying  Speeches,  415. 
Edinburgh,  Visit  to,  398. 
Edinburgh  Review,  Earlji-  History  o' 

25 ;    Attack   on    Oxford,   45 ;    Pa.. 

sages  from,  107-194. 
Edinburgh  Society,  19. 
Edmonton,  Living  of,  67. 
Education,  Classical,  121-131. 

Female,  136-154. 

Popular,  274-5. 


Elephant,  Anecdote  of,  243. 

Ellis,  George,  309. 

Emulation,  207. 

England  in  an  Invasion,  304. 

Erin  go  Bragh,  366. 

Erskinc,  Lord,  Anecdote  of,  39. 

Essays  and  Sketches,  278-296. 

Everett,  Edward,  72;  Letter  on,  415. 

Facts  and  Figures,  426. 

Fagging  System,  16. 

Fallacies,  28-3-5. 

False  Quantities,  115. 

Fearon,  H.  B.,  185. 

Female  Education,  136-154. 

.Fireplaces,  423. 

Foolometer,  a,  337. 

Fostbn-le-Ciay,  47-57. 

Fox,  C.  J.,  Saying  of,  337. 

Fragment  on  the  Irish  Roman  Cath  > 

lie  Church,  363-378. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  62,  315. 
Eraser's  Gallery  of  Portraits,  94. 
Magazine  cited,  119,  436. 


Frere,  John  Hookham,  10. 
Friendship,  of,  281. 
Friendship,  4-33. 
Fuller,  Dr.  Thomas,  102,  259. 


i 


INDEX. 


455 


Gardener,  Scotch,  451. 

Gladstone,  W.  E.,  373. 

God  save  the  Kino-,  311. 

Godericli,  Lord,  373. 

Good  Mail  and  a  Bad  Minister,  299. 

Gout,  409. 

Granbv,  Novel  of,  176-9. 

Grant,"  Sir  William,  395. 

Grattan,  Visits  Mickleham,  36. 

Character  of,  161. 

Gravity  and  License,  95-102. 

(jreat  Western  Railway,  344. 

Green,  Diitf,  71  ;  359. 

Grenvillc,  Thomas,  371. 

Grey,  Karl,  61  ;  Conduct  of  the  Ee- 
form  Bill,  321  ;  394,  402. 

Habit,  Force  of,  248 ;  Orbit  of,  251 ; 
Superiority  to,  251 ;  EfiFect  of,  253. 

Half-Measures,  285. 

Hallam,  Henry,  21. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  27. 

Handshaking,  426. 

Happiness,  434. 

Happiness,  Past,  248. 

Hardness  of  Character,  286. 

Hardships  of  Public  Schools,  154. 

Hare,  James,  81. 

Hawkesbury,  Lord,  300. 

Haydon,  B."  R.,  36  ;  73. 

Hay-Fever,  the,  403. 

Heptarchy  of  the  Press,  323. 

Hobbes  and  his  Pipe,  248. 

Hodgson,  Dr.,  374. 

Holland  House,  22,  30 ;  Historical  No- 
tices of,  86-88  ;  Anecdotes  of,  90 ; 
Dinner  Party,  395. 

Holland,  Lady  (Saba,  daughter  of 
Sydney  Smith),  JMenioir  of  her  Fa- 
ther, iO;  Birth,  30;  Marriage  to 
Sir  Henry  H.,  64. 

Holland,  Lord  (Henry  Ricliard  Vas- 
sall).  Notices  of,  88;  Lady  Holland, 
89,  103. 

Holland,  Sir  Henry,  Notice  of,  64. 

Holoplexia,  258. 

Hook,  Theodore,  450. 

Hope,  Charles,  21. 

Horned  Cattle  and  the  Lion,  336. 

Horner,  Francis,  20;  Notice  of  Smitli's 
Preaching,  25  ;  Notice  of  Lectures, 
35;  Recollections  of,  387-391. 

Howick,  Lord,  306. 

Hoyle,.CharIes,  Poem  Exodus,  101. 

Humour,  Nature  of,  227-231. 

Hunt,  Leigh,  Notices  of  Holland 
House,  86. 


Illusioiis,  452. 

Immortality  of  a  Book,  116. 

Lidi\idual  Peculiarities  and  Genius, 
213. 

rnflictions  on  Youth',  284. 

Inglis,  Sir  Robert,  371. 

Insects  of  the  Tropics,  175. 

Instinct  and  Talent,  241  ;  Change  of 
Instinct,  242. 

Irreligion  and  Impiety,  400. 

Irving,  Edward,  402. 

Washington,  Original  Anec- 
dote of  Luttreil,  443. 

Jameson,  Mrs.,  Notice  of  Svdncy 
Smith.  10 ;  Character  of  his  Wit,  85. 

to  Lady  Blessington,  446. 

Jeffrey,  Francis,  26  ;  Marriage,  46. 

and    the    North    Pole,   417; 

Lines  on,  ib. 

JeflVey's  Aimlysis,  393 ;  Hints  to,  ib.; 
His  Adjectives,  400. 

Jekyll,  J.,  Witticism  of,  429. 

Jenkinson,  Lord  Hawkesbury,  300. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  quoted,  102. 

Joinville,  Prince  do,  370. 

Joke  in  the  Countiy,  426. 

Judge,  Taylor,  and  Barber,  186. 

Kay,  Annie,  50,  55. 

Key,  Sir  John,  446. 

King  of  Clubs,  the,  38. 

Kinglake,  Dr.,  317. 

Kingsley,  Rev.  Charles,  quoted,  262. 

Knowledge,  Rewards  of,  206 ;  Pleas- 
ures of,  216. 

Labour  and  Genius,  195. 

Lamb,  Charles,  97. 

Landscer,  Sir  Thomas,  Anecdote,  102. 

Langfcrd,  W.,  Anniversary  Sermon, 
108. 

Lapdogs,  430. 

Law,  Cheapness  of,  in  America,  186. 

Letters,  Passages  from,  392-416. 

Lewis,  Frankland,  324. 

Leyden,  John,  21. 

Leyden's  Sonnet  on  the  Sabbath,  238, 

Licensing  of  Ale-Houses,  179-183. 

Life  of  a"^ Parent,  392. 

Light  and  Shade,  425. 

Lister,  T.  H.,  177. 

Literature  of  America,  1 87-8. 

Local  English  Morals,  156. 

Local  Moralities,  422. 

Lockhart,  J.  G.,  450. 

Locking-in  on  Railways,  344-352. 

Longevity  and  Wisdom,  243. 

Lucretius,  quoted,  390. 


456 


INDEX. 


Luttrell,  H.,  Smith's  Notices  of,  440 ; 
Epigram  by,  441 ;  Witticisms  of, 
443  ;  Account  of,  ib. 

Lynch,  Judn;c,  193. 

Lyndhurst,  Lord,  321. 

and  Lady,  52,  60. 

Macauhi)^  T.  B.,  43  ;  Tribute  to  Hol- 
land House,  91. 

-,  an  Illustration  from 


Smith,  120. 


-,  Sayings   of  Sydney 


Smith  on,  438-9 

Maclcenzie,  Henry,  22. 

Mackintosh,  Sir  yEneas,  82. 

,  Sir  James,  Character  and 

Anecdotes  of,  379-386. 

, Memoirs,  quoted,  38. 

Malays,  the,  112. 

Malthus,  T.  R.,  401. 

Manners,  430. 

Mathematics,  426. 

Maxims,  394. 

of  Life,  202-4. 

Medical  Advice,  446. 

Statesmanship,  312. 

Practice    of    Sydney   Smith, 

451. 

Melbourne,  Lord,  Character  of,  334. 

Methodism,  Articles  on,  119. 

Microcosm,  the,  10. 

Military  Glory,  187. 

Modern  Changes,  295. 

Monk,  Dr.,  Bisliop  of  Gloucester,  65, 
341. 

Montrand  and  Talleyrand,  437. 

Moore,  Thomas,  Sydney  Smith's  Me- 
moir, 10;  Notice  of  Robert  Smith, 
13 ;  Anecdote  of  Newton's  Studio, 
75  ;  Anecdotes  of  Smith,  84  98 ;  of 
Holland  House,  90 ;  Poetical  Com- 
pliment, 93 ;  Letter  to,  401 ;  Diary, 
quoted,  437,  445. 

Moral  Philosophy  —  Passages  from 
Lectures,  195-255. 

Morgan,  Capt.  E.  E.,  Correspondent 
of  Smith,  71-2;  Portrait  of  Smith, 
75. 

Morley,  Countess  of,  413. 

Murray,  John  A.  (Lord  Murray),  21, 
27. 

MusiE  Etonenses,  11. 

Napier,  Sir  Charles,  History  quoted, 
313. 

New  Song  to  an  Old  Tune,  70. 

Newton,  Gilbert  Stuart,  Portrait  of 
Smith.  75. 

New  Zealand  Attorney,  422. 


New  Zealand,  Bishop  of,  444. 
Nice  Person,  a,  285. 
Niebuhr's  Discoveries,  422. 
Noah,  M.  M.,  Anecdote  of,  191. 
Noctes  AmbrosianjE,  94. 
Noodledom,  143. 
Noodle's  Oration,  164. 
No-Popery  Outcry,  183-4. 
Notes  and  Queries,  cited,  316. 
Novel  by  Sydney  Smith,  443. 
Occupation,  of,  279. 
O'Connell,  326,  365,  369. 
Old  Age  to  be  Passed  in  the  City 

404,  414 
Olier,  Miss,   Birth  and  Character,  9 

Mother  of  Sydney  Smith,  15. 
One-Book  Man,  425. 
Opera,  Invitation  to,  409,  414. 
Oratorio,  an,  399. 

Oxford  UniversityEducation,  121-136. 
visited,  392. 


Paris  visited  by  Smith,  58-60. 
Parishioners,  Advice  to,  287. 
Parody,  232. 

of  Milton,  405. 


Pan-,  Dr.,  Tributes  to  Robert  Smith, 

13. 
,  Spital  Sermon,  107 ;  Philo- 

patris,  120. 
Partington,  Mrs.,  64,  315. 
Passions,  the,  253. 
Paying  in  Turbot,  394 
Peel,  Sir  Robert,  Letter  to,  352,  370. 
Pennsylvania,  Public  Debt,  353. 
Perceval,  Spencer,  297,  299,  300,  302, 

310,  311. 
Percival,  R.,  Account  of  Ceylon,  111. 
Persecutions,  Catholic  and  Protestant, 

298. 
Peter  Plymley,  Passages  from,  297- 

313. 
Petition  of  Sydney  Smith  to  Congress, 

353. 
Philips,  Sir  George,  Notice  of,  73. 
Pictures,  Smith's  Purchase  of,  425. 
Pilpay,  Fable  from,  360. 
Playfair,  John,  22. 
Plymley  Letters,  40,  297-313. 
Po{)e,  Parody  on,  429. 
Person's   Review  of  the    Sovereigji, 

24 ;  Epigram,  ib. 
Portrait  of  Sydney  Smith,  404. 
Practical  Joking,  448. 
Praise,  434. 

Prancing  Indenture,  108. 
Preferment  at  Court,  401. 
Prescott,  \V.  H.,  435. 


INDEX. 


457 


Private  Cellars   and   Public  Houses, 
182. 

Professional  Education,  121-131. 

Ptochogonv,  a,  339. 

Puns,  85,  124. 

Public  Eye,  the,  330. 

Public  Houses  and  Drinking,  179. 

Public  Schools,  154. 

Puseyism,  411. 

Pybus,    Catherine    Amelia,    wife    of 
Smith,  23. 

Charles  Small,  23. 

Pye,  Henry  James,  24. 

Q'aantity,  False,  a,  446. 

Raikes,  T.,  Journal  quoted,  433. 

Railw.ay,  Letters  on,  344-352. 

Randolph,  John,  on  the  Ballot,  68. 

Reading,  Art  of,  208. 

in  Age,  402. 

Rebuke  by  Svdncy  Smith,  423. 

Redesdale,  Lord,  306. 

Reform  Speeches,  314-328. 

Religious  Liberty,  190. 

Riches,  on,  267. 

Ridicule,  Superiority  to,  226 ;  Use  of 
119. 

Rogers,    Heniy,   Notice    of   Smith's 
Lectures,  37. 

,    Samuel,   Notice    of   Robert 

Smith,  14;  Anecdote  of  Lord  Hol- 
land, 16:  of  Lady  Holland,  89; 
Dining-room  Anecdote,  101  and 
Note;  394;  Witticisms  of  Smith, 
435 ;  Anecdotes  of,  ib. ;  Epigram 
on  Ward,  441. 

Romilly,  Sir  Samuel,  Tribute  to,  273. 

Round  Man  in  the  Round  Hole,  206. 

Rousseau  and  D'Epinav,  153. 

Rumford,  Count,  30,  35. 

Russell,  Lord  John,  Smith's  Descrip- 
tion of,  65. 

and  the  Bishops, 

335. 

Salad  Recipe,  427-8. 

Samaritans,  434. 

Sarcasm,  226. 

Science,  Claims  of,  129. 

Scotland  and  the  Catholic  Question, 
303. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  305,  395. 

Seduction,  290. 

Sentence  ou  an  Alderman,  447. 

Selffyn,  George,  309. 

Semiramis,  Invifition  to,  414. 

Sermons,  of,  256. 

Passages  from,  256-277. 

Servants,  Treatment  of,  262. 
20 


Sewing  for  Men,  430. 
Seymour,  Lord  Webb,  20. 
Sham  Sydney  Smiths,  432-3. 
Sharp,  Richard,  Notice  of,  35. 
,  Mot  by  Luttrell. 


She  is  not  Well,  364. 

Shlllaber,  B.  P.,  Mrs.  Partington,  317. 

Shyness,  245. 

Siddons,  Mrs.,  432. 

Sign  of  the  State  in  Difficulty,  394. 

Simon  of  Gloucester,  333,  343. 

Simond,  Louis,  Notice  of,  46. 

Simonides,  Danac,  11. 

Singleton,  Archdeacon,  Letters  to,  64  • 
66,  329-343. 

Skepticism,  205. 

Slavery,  American,  194. 

Sloth  of  Crueltv  and  Ignorance,  311. 

Sloth,  the  173.' 

Small  Men,  422. 

Smith,  Cecil,  14. 

Smith,  Courtenay,  14,  72. 

Smith,  Douglas,  at  AYestminster,  16; 
Death,  61';  Letter  to,  397. 

Smith,  Maria,  15. 

Smith,  Robert  (fivther  of  Sydney),  9, 
15. 

Smith,  Robert  (Bobus)  at  Eton,  10; 
at  Cambridge,  1 1  ;  Verses  "  Ex 
Simonide"  ib. ;  Man-iage,  ib. ;  in 
India,  12;  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, ib. ;  death,  ib. ;  tributes  to,  13. 

Smith,  Sir  Sidney,  9,  59,  382. 

Smith,  Sydney,  Association  of  the 
Names,  9. 

Smith,  Sydney :  Birth  and  Family,  9  ; 
School-Days,  15 ;  in  Normandy,  17  ; 
at  Oxford,  17;  enters  the  Church, 
ib. ;  at  Netheravon,  ib. ;  at  Edin- 
burgh, 18  ;  Projects  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  25 ;  Sermons  at  Edinburgh, 
29  ;  in  London,  30 ;  Chapel  Preach- 
ing, 30-2 ;  Character  of  Sermons, 
33 ;  Charge  of  Plagiarism,  ib. ;  Lec- 
tures on  Moral  Philosophy,  34 ; 
Plymley  Letters,  40 ;  in  Yorkshire, 
43;  Controversy  with  Oxford,  45; 
Justice  of  the  Peace,  56 ;  Visits 
France,  57-60;  at  Bristol,  ib. ; 
Canon  of  St.  Paul's,  61  ;  Combo 
Florcy,  61-3  ;  Reform  Speeches,  64  ; 
Letters  to  Archdeacon  Singleton, 
64-66;  the  Ballot,  68;  Letters  on 
American  Debts,  69-72;  Death, 
74 ;  Personal  Appearance,  ib. ; 
Characteristics,  75-79;  Intellectual 
Habits,  79-81 ;   Wit  and  Humour 


458 


INDEX. 


81-85 ;  Letters,  86  ;  Contemporary 

Notices,  93-4  ;  License  and  Gravity 

Considered,  95-102;  Summary,  104. 
Smoking,  Habit  of,  250. 
Sniythe,  George  Sydney,  9. 
Smythe,  Sir  Thomas,  9. 
Socinian,  434. 

Soldiers  and  Theology,  300. 
Solvent  States,  361. 
Somervillc,  Lord,  305. 
Sonnet  on  the  Sabbath,  23S. 
Sovereign,  the,  a  poem,  23. 
Sovereign,  Transit  of,  429. 
Specie  and  Species,  445. 
Spirits,  Consumption  of,  182. 
St.  Antony,  410. 
Stage-Coach  Travelling,  419. 
Stephen,  James,  302. 
Stewart,  Dugaid,  21  ;  Death  of,  423. 
Study,  Habits  of,  209. 
Styles,  Rev.  John,  119. 
Sublimity,  235. 
Supplies  for  the  Mind,  195. 
Susan  Hopley,  410. 
Swing,  Mr.,  Letter  to,  291. 
Table-Talkof  Sydney  Smith,  417, 452. 
Talfourd,  Serjeant,  336. 
Talleyrand,     Witticism     on     Eobert 

Sm'ith,  14;  Madame  De  Stael,  115; 

Anecdotes  of,  436. 
Tarring  and  Feathering,  362. 
Taste,  Certainty  of,  236. 
Taunton,  Reform  Speeches,  314. 
Taxes,  187-8. 
Tea  and  Coffee,  431. 
Telemachus,  422. 
Temperance,  400. 
Thackeraj',  W.  M.,  Allusion  to  Lord 

Carlisle,  52. 
Thomson,  John,  21,  27. 
Thomson,  Thomas,  27. 
Three  Sexes.  434. 
Tickell,  Richard,  309. 
Ticknor,  George,  72. 
Tithes,  452. 

Town  and  Country,  405,  431. 
Travel,  Books  of,  and  Travellers,  109, 

1.56. 


Triumph  of  Civilized  Life,  393. 

Ti-uth,  199,  264. 

Tuckerman,  H.  T.,  Article  in  N.  A 

Review,  92. 
Twelve  Parson  Power,  448. 
Twenty-Four  Hours  after,  425. 
Twiss,' Horace,  324. 
Understanding,  Conduct  of  the,  195. 
Union  of  America,  192. 
Utilitarian,  a,  424. 
Vampire,  the,  174. 
Vanille  of  Society,  430. 
Vellum  and  Piuinpkin,  319. 
Venus  Millinaria,  429. 
Vei'sailles  Railway  Accident,  344. 
Vestry,  a,  448. 
Victoria,  Sermon  on  the  Accession  of, 

274. 
Village,  the,  an  Apologue,  307. 
Virgilian  Pun,  444. 
War,  276,  399. 
War  and  Credit,  358. 
Ward  (Lord  Dudley),  Witticisms  on 

Rogers,  436;    Anecdotes   of,  439; 

Account  of,  440. 
Waste  of  Life,  422. 
Waterton,    Cliarles,    Wandei-ings    in 

South  America,  166-176. 
Webster,  Daniel,  Correspondence  with 

Smith,  406,  434. 
Well-informed  Women,  392. 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  324,  327. 
Wet  Clothes,  288. 
Whewell,  Dr.,  35,  448. 
Whip-poor-Will,  171. 
Whishaw,  John,  395. 
Who  Reads  an  American  Book  ?  188. 
Wild  Curates,  444. 
William   IV.  and   the   Reform  Bill, 

322,  328. 
Wisdom  of  our  Ancestors,  162. 
Wit,  Essentials  of,  217-224;  a  Culti- 
vable Faculty,  224;    Dangers  and 

Advantages  of,  233. 
Words,  Abuse  of,  199. 
Wourali  Poison,  168. 
Youth  and  Familiarity,  447. 


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